Easy enough, to a rational audience: What’s cheaper - 3% overhead or 30%? That’s Medicare vs. private insurance today. How about denial of coverage and endless wrangling over claims - do you like that today? How about losing your doctor when you change jobs, or your employer changes programs - how’s that workin’ out for ya?
The *real *biggest barrier, as it was for ACA, will be your party’s predictable campaign of lies and obstruction.
You are missing the point of the question. Do you have a credible plan wherein people pay the same, or less, in taxes that they do now in premiums and deductibles, AND delivers the same level of health care? Does that include spending cuts, and if so, what is the plan to deliver the same level of health care while paying doctors and nurses and hospitals and technicians and drug companies less?
Actually one of the problems with ACA was the lies Obama told while selling it. One of the architects of the ACA admitted that he didn’t really believe what he was saying - he just needed to sell the program. Partly because of that, it is going to be harder this time for your side to be believed when they make the same kinds of promises.
So this thing where you try to change the subject when hard questions come up about costs and availability is somewhat less likely to fly.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice - Medicare for All!
Or perhaps not.
Regards,
Shodan
Have you not been paying attention for the last ten years?
The facts won’t matter, to a large part of the population represented by your party; they never do. The “Government takeover!” and “Death panels!” and “We’re not allowed to read it!” and “Well, yes we are, but it’s too long to understand!” and “Tyranny!” cries *will *matter. But they’ll eventually be overcome by their finding out what’s in it after it’s passed, as Pelosi predicted, and the lies are exposed and cease to matter. You know, how they got fooled the first time. And will again the second time, of course, so shame on them.
If we’re losing potential qualified health care professionals because of the cost of training, then that’s one more thing we’re currently doing wrong.
Uh, do you remember who you voted for in 2016?
And you’re making a big deal about credibility?
Wow, yeah, incredible rebuttals.
Oh, wait, {you need to hear this in the voice of Peter Falk as Columbo} there’s just one thing: the experience of the entire civilized world.
The experience of the entire civilized world, specifically, in huge cost reductions, the absence of bureaucratic meddling in individual patients’ health care, the absence of life-threatening claims denials, and improved outcomes for everyone at about half the cost per patient.
There’s a HUGE amount of overhead in the US medical system that could easily be cut. I work as a nursing home doctor for a large hospitalist company that takes a huge cut of what I bill. One patient who I’ve been seeing for years now mentioned to me that she gets bills from my company for 600 to 800 dollars during months when I visit her twice. Would you like to guess how much of that I actually see? 60 dollars. Some of that goes into things like our electronic medical record and malpractice insurance, but about half of it is profit for the company. That half could be cut and no one who actually matters to the patient (I’m pretty sure the patients don’t care about the stockholders for the company I work for making a profit) would suffer one bit. They might even be better off.
According to this post on October 1, 2016, Shodan stated that he would prefer voting for Zoltan Istvan ahead of Trump. I believe there was a subsequent post in a different thread closer to Election Day where he stated he was not planning on voting for Trump.
https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=19668889&postcount=37
Half of all Americans are totally unaware that there exists any civilization, or any world, outside of the continental USA.
That’s a sad fact, but it’s real.
But there’s one little bit of hope: Canada.
Canada is the only country that Americans who watch Fox News aren’t afraid of.
And Canada also has a very good health system.
The only way to sell decent health care to the American public is to avoid words like “socialism” or “government sponsored”.
And especially avoid labels like “Obama care”.
Even “medicare for all” is a bad label, because it reminds everybody of scary government bureaucracy.
But there is one label that would actually work: “Canada Care”.
Americans like Canada. It’s got a great image --100% white, English speaking, full of tough-guy lumberjacks, who are almost as respectable as John Wayne.
America needs to stop asking “what will universal health care look like, which system from which European country should we adopt?”, etc…
Instead, America needs some strong leaders to proclaim: “We’re going to go with the Canadian system. Let’s do it, we can be as good as they are!”
Repeat it often, and loudly, with a massive television campaign. “Canada Care! Canada Care! It works!!”
I really think that Americans and Foxnews would start discussing it seriously, instead of screaming about death panels.
If it’s a fact, then you have a cite, correct?
I don’t see the connection. How is medical and pharmaceutical research affected by the way the application of its outcomes in patient care is paid for? To the extent that there may be money locked up in the administration of insurance schemes that may become redundant, that money may be available for redistribution to research and/or care delivery: as with the OP’s original questions, that would all depend on what your voters and legislators choose to set up as a system.
Actually no, you won’t find such a system in the developed world that does it *cheaper *and provides the *same *level of healthcare.
You may however find some that do do it *cheaper *and deliver *better *health outcomes.
You appear to start with the assumption that USA healthcare generally is better than comparable countries. I’m not sure on what basis you make that judgement.
No, I am not making that assumption. What specific spending cuts would you expect to improve health outcomes, and where specifically should those cuts be applied?
If you mean spending more on preventative care, first, preventative care does not cut spending overall. If you mean more efficient utilization, I have mentioned that one of the ideas of Obamacare was that it would reduce emergency room visits in favor of visits to PHPs. That didn’t work out either - both visits to PHPs and to emergency rooms went up.
So, again specifically, what would you cut, and how will that improve outcomes?
FWIW my belief is that we will need some form of rationing, and that rationing will basically have little effect on health care outcomes. Demographics and case mix are more important factors.
But, just to be clear - I am not interested in where we should spend more. I would like to know where we should spend less. And spend less now - not where we should spend more in hopes of reducing costs later, but where we should spend less now and reduce costs now. And a reasonable estimate of the effects of those spending cuts on health care outcomes. TIA.
Regards,
Shodan
I like it. But maybe make it sound more like it came from a right-leaning think tank: The Ottawa Model.
[ul]
[li]By not having to pay insurance companies.[/li][li]By having a central body responsible for procuring drugs and services.[/li][li]By not encouraging excessive expenditure on unnecessary tests that make hospitals more money.[/li][li]By making the service ‘for patient and not-for-profit’ not ‘for profit’.[/li][/ul]
nah…that sounds all high-and-mighty…like somethin’ some kinda east-coast libtard would say. Gosh, who even knows what an Ottawa is? 
Let the talking heads on CNN can call it the “Ottawa model”, while they discuss all the boring stuff, like finances and taxes.
But before that, you need to get airtime on Fox, to win over the heart of the American people , and overcome their irrational fears of government health care.
So you need something simple and blunt. “Canada Care” is catchy,easy to say, and not so easy to dismiss immediately as “foreign” and scary.
It’s gonna be my slogan when I run for president. Wanna join me?
[on edit: my apologies for hijacking the thread. this thread isn’t about politics]
The improved outcomes part comes from, of course, people who are currently under- or non-insured getting to see doctors earlier in the progress of their condition, or at all. How that could be mysterious or controversial is remarkable.
I would cut out the amount of work, and workers, needed for billing and administration of health care costs.
Less work and fewer workers in doctors’ and hospitals’ back office.
And of course, I would eliminate 90% of the business of private insurers. Rough numbers I can find (correct me if wrong), there are at least 500,000 people employed in private insurance.
Replace that business with a government agency and Washington bureaucrats numbering perhaps 100,000 (comparison: the Social Security Administration employs about 60,000).
I actually agree you can’t save money with preventative care. Neither can you save money in the aggregate e.g. by paying less for the same medicines. All of that will only free up money for extra care and more (and more expensive) medicines. Because there is an infinite pent-up demand for these things. I still support these actions (plus distributing the money, care and medicines differently) but that’s not what you asked.
Plus, alliteration. OK, you convinced me.
Think we can get the South Park guys to write a new version of “Blame Canada” as our theme song?
OK, well I read it as suggesting that current USA healthcare is better than those countries that have UHC (which are cheaper and paid for by taxation)
I don’t think that you can draw a simple line from a specific cut to tangible healthcare improvement, nor do I think I suggested so.
Making cuts to the existing broken system you have is not the way to go in order to get better outcomes for less money, a whole new system is needed. Rip it up and start again.
Luckily, there are multiple options out there that have already been tried and tested. It isn’t a question of *whether *it would be cheaper and better, it clearly would.