Okay, since it’s my thread I will try to calmly untangle this in the face of what seems like unprovoked hostility.
You started by saying:
Presumably this means you think the people you quoted below that have misconceptions. The second quote was the following:
To which you responded:
What “misconception” did you clear up? You added some interesting details and context, but I don’t see the misconception.
Then I responded to the “little over 10% of the population” part with:
This is just math, based on current estimates of the US population, combined with the fact that Warren and Sanders have clearly stated that they would not allow private health insurance at all.
You responded to this very straightforward extrapolation with:
What’s “totally bizarre and utterly distorted” about it? What was the point of saying “everyone is entitled to choose the public system which offers unconditional and unlimited coverage of all medically necessary procedures”? This would also be true for all the other major candidates like Biden and Buttigieg, who would offer a public plan for anyone who wants or needs one, but also allow people to stay on their private health plan if they prefer.
The only way any of your combative posts make sense is if you think that RitterSport and I are arguing that healthcare is not a right and that there shouldn’t be universal coverage, that people should either not get treatment or go bankrupt from the cost of their treatments. But we haven’t said that, and have pretty directly said otherwise. Sooo…wot’s the deal?
Others are entitled to disagree, and to let themselves be governed accordingly. To paraphrase Joseph de Maistre, in a democracy people get the government – and the society – they deserve.
It’s a pretty ruthless law of nature, actually, because social systems have no more forgiveness for the consequences of ignorance and bad policy than the physical laws of nature. If you choose to pay far more for health care than other nations while being content to get far less for it, while some of your fellow citizens die from lack of it altogether, then that’s a choice you collectively made and that’s the fundamental quality of the society you have to live in.
No, I’ve been looking at the board intermittently and didn’t see your post #121 with its various strange circumlocutions the last time I posted. And I still have no idea what you’re on about, but I’ll respond to the best of my ability to follow your strange line of argument. To wit:
I cleared up the misconception that “Medicare for all” necessitates the banning of private insurance, and the additional misconception that private insurance is used to “pay extra for extra coverage”. In most systems, private insurance is a different form of coverage altogether when it comes to medically necessary health care, not an “add-on”, though it is that for sure in US Medicare. But that’s not how most systems work, which provide all medically necessary health care regardless of ability to pay and without conditions or limits, making “add-on” coverage redundant for medically necessary procedures. Instead of being “combative” – to use your term – you should strive to understand how other systems actually work, like that one that I’ve lived with all my life.
I still have absolutely no idea what the relevance of some percentage of the population choosing private vs. public health insurance is. The main point is that everyone gets health care, and those who can afford it get better amenities (more luxurious accommodations, better food). Your “little over 10% of the population” comment seemed to imply that 10% of the population would be left without health care benefits or something. Whether it’s 5%, or 10%, or 50% who choose that option is irrelevant. Who cares? They’re just the ones willing to fork out their own money to get more luxurious amenities and, possibly – for non-critical elective procedures – quicker access. That situation already exists in the US, in a rather extreme and horrifying example of mercenary medicine.
There was no such misconception in the posts you quoted. In fact, if anyone in this entire thread has had that misconception, I don’t recall it. However, Bernie’s single payer plan does in fact ban private health insurance, and Elizabeth Warren raised her hand to say she also supports eliminating private health insurance. (So did Kamala Harris, but she later walked it back.)
Other Democrats running do not want to ban private health insurance, but they do want to fill in the gaps so that everyone is covered. In polls, Americans favor that more moderate patchwork approach to achieve universal coverage, but do not support the banning of private health insurance that Warren and Sanders are advocating.
I have been studying this issue since I was in college and the “Hillarycare” proposal crashed and burned. Additionally, my sister became a naturalized Canadian citizen in the ‘90s, and so did my mother a few years ago.
The relevance is that Warren and Sanders want to ban Americans from having that option, which clearly works perfectly well in Germany.
The whole point of this thread is that it is crucial politically to have a system like that where people who are more well off can have precisely those advantages. Warren and Sanders do not want to allow anyone to have that option. I’m repeating myself, but it really seems like you aren’t aware of the distinction between their proposal and what other Democrats are advocating.
As they say on Sesame Street, “One of these things is not like the other”.
You’re saying that there would be riots in the US if there were wait lists like in Canada (eg - some months to get an MRI), and yet Americans put up with no health care for decades because they aren’t insured or uninsured.
Why weren’t you rioting in the streets when you were denied health care for decades?
Reduced and non-service are OK if they happen to other people, and you can rationalize it by finding a way to say they just aren’t as deserving as you. You only protest when it starts to happen to you too. Medical care is just one example.
If 2nd place Bernie starts taking the lead over Biden I bet the Medical industry and Big Pharma will be out rioting in the streets. Or more like throwing tons of money around to advertise against Bernie. No more billions in profits for them if M4A becomes law.
Did you even read the post you seem to be responding to, right above yours?
Because I was not a privileged, affluent swing voter with good insurance who had that suddenly changed by politicians. I was working hard to support Democrats, though, and I was bitterly disappointed when Obamacare did not cover me.
And it’s not just about waiting for MRIs. My sister has twice had to wait months for surgery on her knee and foot that meant she had to use crutches in the interim. It was only non-critical in the sense that she would not die while waiting.
The wound care red tape my mother ran into OTOH could have killed her since she is a diabetic.
I’m one of the guys with good health care paid for by my employer and me.
The surgeon to do my hip replacement planned to go on vacation with a friend, and I had to wait a month. His friend died (I wonder what health insurance he had) and the surgeon sat around the house or played golf while I walked on crutches and waited for a month.
That’s right. When polled about private coverage ceasing, people don’t like it so much.
Let’s keep in mind that most Americans like their health care (about 80%), and their insurance (about 70%).
People tend to like their own situation pretty good, even if they think the overall US situation is bad. And honestly, most people know their own situation better than they know the macro-situation…kind of like I know my own car better than I know the entire auto industry. And in my own experience, I like my healthcare and my insurance. I have private insurance through my employer, and it’s worked well for me and my family (including some family members with serious chronic conditions). I’d hate to lose it.
Anyway, in the face of most polling, whatever Democrat gets nominated, I hope they keep Private Insurance around. If they try and get rid of it, I think they’ll lose a lot of support in the general election. We can get to UC without throwing out private insurance.
That poll is very instructive about the danger. I showed it to several friends, including some who are generally pragmatic and not on the left edge of the party, and they were genuinely surprised by those results. They really believed that almost everyone hated their health insurance company.
In a weird way, I see the greatest threat to people’s health care being what might happen within a decade if Warren wins fairly comfortably thanks to massive disgust with Trump, and perhaps a burgeoning recession.
She claims a mandate, gets this law passed, and consumers get kicked off their private insurance while millions of people who now work in the health insurance industry suddenly find themselves out of jobs. Actually, not just them but benefit advisors at workplaces, clerical staff at hospitals and doctors offices who sort out insurance claims, etc. A great improvement in economic efficiency to be sure, but also a massive economic and social shock to the system. Who’s to say other jobs get created for them right away, as opposed to this being the jumpstart of the automation economy Yang warns of (which I started a thousand-post thread about back in 2012), with fewer net jobs available?
So we get a huge Republican backlash wave election sometime in the 2020s, and they repeal MFA. But wait: Medicaid and Obamacare were already repealed when that law was put into place. Oops. So now we go back to the 1950s? Maybe Republicans put something barebones back into play for the very poorest, but it won’t be much, especially for adults in their 30s/40s/50s…
I don’t hate my insurance plan, I hate the amount of money the insurance and medical companies make.
I would hate to keep wasting this huge amount of money to keep clerks employed. A concept I’ve not heard mentioned is providing employment when an industry fires most of their employees, like coal mining. Such a plan should include any large number of workers for any industry. With health care, the loss of jobs will be expected. It would be much easier to move medical insurance workers to life, real estate or automotive insurance than retrain coal miners.
That’s one talking point in support of not going to a one-size-fits-all health coverage approach. If we do M4A, and there are no other choices, then a group of angry Republicans could wreck the whole system. Currently, they can only take potshots at smaller parts, and not the whole thing.
Close parallell to removing the ACA, which hasn’t happened for pretty much the same reasons. For the Republicans to take away the system without having a very clear and immediately available alternative would be flat out ballot box suicide. Think No Deal Brexit, but with no third party to try to shuffle the blame to.
Putting some input into the debate from a Norwegian’s perspective; private insurance here is more about queue skipping, convenience and being able to second guess your doctor than anything else. (Frequently as banal as getting a doctor / office who grovel a bit / “are better at customer service”.) Sometimes it might also get you access to - or at least the ability to purchase - prohibitively expensive or experimental drugs for rare diseases.
It doesn’t really hurt the faith in the core system and I doubt it’s going anywhere, but I can see the temptation for Sanders to kill it completely. Whatever remains after his reform has been amended to death in order to pass, will be what the Republicans will be trying to use to resuscitate its’ corpse. Bigger remains = bigger wedge.
When Warren and Sanders want to suddenly zoom right past Norway, it’s clear we have a problem. All the elements you described of what role private insurance plays in Norway are precisely what we need to preserve in our country to avoid political catastrophe.
OK, well keep in mind that the health insurance industry employs half a million people.
That’s an awful lot of good jobs that potentially go out the door when we do M4A with no private insurance option. Now, I know some of them will find employment elsewhere. And government will absorb some of those jobs with more jobs needed for Medicare. But that’s a big displacement, and some families will not adjust and will be hurt. Also, things like VA, TriCare, and Medicaid will also come to an end under the Sanders M4A. These represent additional jobs lost within the government & with private contractors. States governments lose employment as well, as they no longer have a role in regulating health insurance.
To avoid this displacement, I’m thinking that staying with the ACA and enhancing the subsidies, as well as beefing up the regs around insurers is a better option. As has been discussed earlier in this thread, we can get to full UC without getting rid of private insurance. Many countries have done that very thing, and are happy with their systems.
… and not a single one of them actually provides health care, many of them actively work to block access to it by limiting or denying claims, and every single one of them adds to its cost. There may be valid arguments in favor of a private health insurance tier but that sure isn’t one of them.
I don’t see why. The number of people covered would not go down, and every one of them would continue to need insurance workers to handle that coverage.
Did you even read the post you seem to be responding to, right above yours?