Sigh.
For the last time, I’ll make this statement. No other country has reduced their costs substantially, because no other country has ever had the high costs that we are currently experiencing.
Yes, there will be one-time costs and disruptions with the change. All the people involved in our current administrative bloat will have to find other things to do, and all the executives pocketing big bonuses for denying care will have to try to make do with a bit less. But no mainstream proposal for expanding Medicare eligibility also involves banning private insurance. Even Britain has a private system alongside its beloved NHS.
Yes, claiming that one-time disruption, to any extent it actually exists, is a good reason not to do it at all is disingenuous. It’s simply inventing excuses.
Anyone satisfied with their current private insurance knows, or should, that it could go away at any time, and will keep costing more every year at higher than the rate of inflation. The prospect of a secure backstop certainly *is *enticing. Yes, many people are willing to be scared out of it, as we saw in the anti-ACA lie campaign, or in the anti-Medicare debate half a century earlier, but is that a reason not to do it? Please note that even the Republican position is “repeal and replace”, never mind that they cannot define what to replace ACA with - they too know we need it, and that their voters actually know it too.
In what way? Is that a reference to “You can keep it”, which is not true either with or without ACA? Or was that some sort of bothsidesism?
Whenever I read your arguments I always imagine a fat guy talking to his skinny friends.
SHODAN: “There’s no way I can lose weight”
REST OF WORLD “Well, we control our portions and exercise, and we’re all skinny”
SHODAN “You have no evidence that would work for me. None of you have ever needed to lose 200 lbs. I’m a special case” stuffs his face with donuts, doesn’t lose weight
Then you understand my point, which is that saying “if the US implements UHC like Canada, we will spend much less like Canada” is not really on point.
One of the current ideas is to implement Medicare for All. Pointing out that a program that causes most health care providers to lose money on providing health care seems to me to be a perfectly valid point. “Buy at five, sell at three, make up the difference on volume” is not a particularly convincing argument.
Sure, let’s change the US health care market. Changing it so doctors lose money by providing health care doesn’t strike me as an improvement. YMMV.
Regards,
Shodan
It’s almost like you can’t even “hear” what I’m saying. Try to keep up.
More like -
EVERYONE ON THE SDMB: “You should lose 200 pounds. My neighbor takes spinach pills every day, and he only weighs 135.”
Me: “What did he weigh before he started taking spinach pills?”
EVERYONE ON THE SDMB: “That’s not the point. Why do you hate poor people?”
Regards,
Shodan
Actually, it’s more like:
EVERYONE ON THE SDMB: “You should lose 200 pounds. My neighbor takes spinach pills every day, and he only weighs 135.”
Shodan: “What did he weigh before he started taking spinach pills?”
EVERYONE ON THE SDMB: “He’s always weighed 135 pounds, and taking spinach pills is a big reason why. But somehow you cannot understand that concept.”
Or:
Me: “I pay $3,000 a month in rent”
Next door neighbor with identical residence: “I pay $1,500 in rent”
My wife: “Why don’t we pay $1,500 in rent?”
Me: “Because we’d go broke, stupid! Anyway, look at his place, the driveway needs patching! That’s way worse than our leaky roof and backed up sewer line.”
BTW, just in general, the question of:
How can we modify our health care system from one that consumes 20% of our GDP to one that consumes 10-12%, like all these other countries?
SHOULD be the single biggest question our lawmakers tackle every single year. It should not be ignored every year, and certainly nobody should be suggesting that 20% is BETTER than 10-12%. The idea that we can’t do it is ridiculous because we have hardly even tried.
No one else has tried either.
Regards,
Shodan
They all did, long ago. It worked, too.
Nobody else had to. They got their UHC in before they had a giant problem.
We flush 8-10% of our GDP down the fucking shitter. 8-10% of the GDP thrown at health care that nobody else has to spend.
You want to talk national emergency THAT is an emergency! Hell, I’d give Trump a Great Wall of Gyna down there to get some actual action on this. 2,000 miles of stone and mortar with his fat face puckered up on every tower.
Solid reason for us to not even try. Shit’s broken, let’s not try to fix it.
Wait, we can’t have UHC because we can’t cut the costs we’d need to? Changing to a single payer system is what cuts the fucking costs. JFC, Shodan. That’s some circular reasonin’ right thar, son.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: the level of intellectual bankruptcy you’re demonstrating in this thread is delicious. Your desire to badly argue a point that even you know is wrong has led you to take (and never abandon) the following positions:
[ol]
[li]Cutting costs by two trillion dollars is somehow a bad thing. “Fiscal conservatism, except if it means I’ll lose an argument”[/li][li]The more expenses you have the harder it is to find places to cut costs. “Cutting out the fat is harder the more fat there is because of the thickness of the fat.”[/li][li]We shouldn’t emulate the people who have done the right thing all along, because by doing the right thing they haven’t had to face the problems that we have. “Sure, I’m going to jail for stealing, and Gary isn’t. But Gary’s not a good role model for me because by never stealing he’s never had to go to jail.”[/li][/ol]
At this point it is clear that you are either lying, or engaging in premeditated stupidity, and I am not sure which is worse. Taking your foolishness out of order -
Your figure of $2T in savings is false, as has been mentioned several times. The report says so, since it also says that even a doubling of corporate and personal income tax will not cover the whole cost of M4A, but will instead increase the deficit. Increasing the deficit is not “savings”. Ergo, your figure of $2T is wrong - it is a lesser but undetermined amount.
As to 3, by all means let’s emulate those societies who have been able to do what the US needs to do. The unfortunate thing is that there aren’t any such societies, so we have no one to emulate.
As to 2, M4A is the model currently being suggested as UHC for America. Medicare as it stands causes health care providers to lose money most of the time. Is that an example of the sort of easy cuts you want?
I recognize that you are incapable or unwilling to understand, let alone address, these points in any substantive way. That’s a pity, but at least it is clear who is, and who is not, to be taken seriously.
Regards,
Shodan
There are a lot of lies being told, yes. Is that not one?
Except for almost anywhere else. :rolleyes:
So they claim. But there are plenty of providers who do it anyway. Why, d’ya suppose?
Hell, yes. Unless your goal is to keep doctors and Big Pharma rich, instead of actually helping people.
Oh yes, your brilliant argument that “reducing costs makes the deficit go up.” You should repeat it more. You’ll convince someone eventually.
I’m going to open a store where we charge you less if you pay with the money in your left pocket than if you pay with the money in your right pocket. I suspect your head would explode while you tried to figure it out.
What a terrible metaphor for your case. Do you not realize that staying at 135, what someone has always weighed, is a million times easier than going from 335 to 135 and staying there?
One more time.
Shodan has been asking for examples of countries that have reduced their health care costs by 25-40%. Several of us have pointed out, numerous times, that no other country has ever spent as much money as we are currently spending, thus there are no examples of such cost reduction.
Now, if you’re saying that reducing our costs will be tough and the lower costs will be hard to maintain, I would agree. But I’m not at all sure that’s what you meant.