I think this is partially addressed by Babale. If all health care is funded by the taxpayer, then public subsidies that replace drug company profits don’t save anything.
If M4A saves money, then we could re-allocate some of that money back to R&D, although that means we would save less money.
Yes. But the scales involved are ludicrously skewed. We are wasting tons of money, way more than the 156 billion spent on R&D (Not to mention that other countries bear the R&Dcost as well).
Do you think Americans are just so stupid that our doctors waste 8% of all money and there’s nothing we can do about it? Clearly, one of three things is happening to the money:
our system is particularly inefficient and wastes far more than any other nation
Americans are just so obese and unhealthy that it costs twice as much to care for them as it does to care for people in other nations
our healthcare system isn’t trying to provide the best care possible for the lowest cost and failing; it’s trying to line the pockets of special interests and succeeding marvelously
The problem with equating the cost of health insurance with the cost of taxes for health care is that they are not the same thing. The more you spend in health insurance the better your health insurance is. However with taxes, everyone benefits equally regardless of how much they pay. This gives everyone an incentive to pay as little tax as possible. People arrange their affairs to minimize taxes as much as possible currently, when income taxes are doubled to pay for healthcare this incentive becomes much stronger. This deadweight loss to the economy is estimated at around 25% of the tax paid. That is much more than the hypothetical savings of unified administration. The way around that is to pay for it like much of europe does with regressive taxes such as a VAT. Politically regressive taxes are even more unpopular than regular taxes, so that would be very difficult to get through congress.
Medical bankruptcy is an outcome that can happen in almost any system. In Canada which has a universal healthcare scheme, medical issues are the 3rd leading cause of bankruptcy. Most of the difference in bankruptcy rates between America in Europe are because the bankruptcy laws in America are much more lenient than those in Europe so more people take advantage of them.
At 4:30 in the Video XT posted, the video states that covering everyone in the US with a great system such as Frances would mean that the US government would have to allocate 12-15 % of its budget to healthcare. It seemed reasonable to point out that the US government is allocating 27 % to the government parts of its current healthcare setup.
(I think the videos numbers are wrong, but its hardly the only issue its got.)
What strikes me about this whole thing, is that if you were to make an actual video about the European perspective on UHC, it would be about how cheap and easy it is compared to the current setup.
These discussions always degenerate into many Americans declaring that they simply cannot believe that healthcare can be cheaper and more effective than in the US system, and everyone who lives in a UHC nation trying to explain that yes, it obviously is, and everyone else is doing it.
I’d like a cite for those statements. And preferably one that differentiates between “medical bankruptcies” caused by becoming seriously ill and losing one’s job (which happens everywhere) and “medical bankruptcies” specifically caused by high medical bills (which…doesn’t).
In which countries can you go bankrupt from medical bills by becoming seriously ill and losing your job? I thought one of the selling points of UHC was that this couldn’t happen, because health coverage was a birthright and not tied to employment. IOW we implement Warren’s version of M4A, everyone is covered whether employed or not, and there are no premiums or co-pays or deductibles. Then somebody loses his or her job and gets sick. Wouldn’t M4A pay for everything, just the same?
I believe he is separating “bankruptcies cause by medical bills” from "bankruptcies cause by becoming too ill to work and losing the income needed to pay other bills. Such as mortgages etc"
The first is mainly a US thing in the First world, the second can happen anywhere. Puddlegum tries to lump them both together which allows him to pretend the first happens frequently outside the US.
You don’t get my question. “Medical bankruptcies” as a category can include bankruptcies caused by the inability to work due to illness. Even where you don’t have medical bills, you’ve still got to eat, pay rent, etc,. Some stats lump both types of bankruptcies (those due to loss of income and those due to high medical bills) together.
If this is your definition of medical bankruptcy, then it almost never happens in America. Only about4-5% of bankruptcies are caused by medical bills and not lost work.
Exactly, if the problem is bankruptcies caused by medical issues, then disability insurance reform is much more important than medical insurance reform, and the emphasis on the bankruptcies in medical insurance reform is only clouding the real issues.
I think US pharma R&D is closer to 80 billion. Assume M4A cuts that by 20 billion.
We don’t even need 20 billion in public funds to make up for it. Due to the multiplier effect, something like 5-10 billion in subsidies, tax credits, basic research funding, etc. should be met with an additional 10-15 billion in private sector spending, making up the 20 billion loss.
Which is far less money than the 400-500 billion a year we’d save with M4A to start with. Savings would grow with time. Medicare for all has lower administration, lower reimbursements and bulk negotiation power. All of which save money.
The entire worlds biomedical research budget is about 320 billion. US healthcare is about 3 200 billion, and the waste in that is about 1 600 billion. Most productive nation by head of population is the UK. Mind, its a small difference.
Apologists for present-day U.S. health financing like to weep for the poor pharma companies and their huge R&D costs.
Know that Big Pharma spends more on marketing than it spends on R&D. (And IIRC takes in more profit than it spends on marketing!) Even their published figures are misleading: Payments to physicians for “drug studies” are accounted as R&D but are little more than marketing ploys.
It’s a simple principle. Overcharge the public on cigarette taxes and the lung transplants are free. Overcharge the public on liquor taxes and the liver transplants are free. :eek: