I can’t begin to tell you how much confidence I have in the views of an organisation - sorry ‘Institute’ - fronted by a Hedge Fund manager.
He is surely involved for the common good. As are the rest of the lawyer and fund managers on that board.
What a stunning refutation! Are there other fallacies you will share with us?
Then you are air brushing his own confusion on what really drives total cost of healthcare.
What % of total healthcare expenses are related to administrative costs? Is that really the driver of why our healthcare is so much more expensive?
For those wondering how manhattan-institute was able to come up with such a huge estimate of “single-payer overhead”, here’s how they do it.
Consider an employee, John Doe, earning $50,000 in the private sector who’s on-track to become a $100,000 manager. Because of single-payer, the Medicare deduction from his payroll check becomes 4% instead of 2%. In other words an extra 2% is going to be withheld; the $50,000 extra he was hoping to earn will only be $49,000 with the new tax policy. With this loss looming, he abandons his career path, content with the lower wage. Who wants a better job, when there’s little extra money to be had?
The economy suffers $50,000 in losses – the contributions Mr. Doe now refuses to make because the state is just confiscating his earnings anyway.
In the accounting of the linked article, this entire $50,000 loss must be considered part of the health-care administrative burden.
Opinions may differ on whether this analysis is valid, but if you, like me, find it specious, here’s a simple pro-tip: Manhattan Institute is a right wing “think” tank. – 'Nuff said.
:smack:
Velocity, are you a conservative? Or are you a centrist just trying to guess what conservative arguments might be, since they’ve been unable to elucidate reasons in this thread? In any case, OP asked for “no straw men.”
Another one I hear libertarians and conservatives go on about is “rationing” of health care. If we put the government in charge of running who gets health care, then they are going to ration people unfairly.
Of course the truth is that with private insurance companies we already get rationing, and it’s really evilly unfair. Government may or may not be worse, but they wouldn’t be creating rationing. It already exists.
I’m still trying to work out what “gaming the system” is with regards to Healthcare. Getting unneeded antibiotics?
Welfare mamas break their own legs deliberately to get free splints? 
Eat greeasy food and get artery disease knowing the taxpayer will pay for their heart surgery?
But “best of thread” has to be the “think” tank that puts single-payer overhead as 4 to 5 times private overhead because of all the Job Creators who would move their factories to Somalia if, instead of paying for employee health insurance, they had to pay more Taxxes! (As if the “thinkers” wouldn’t just borrow more from China instead of raising taxes. :smack: )
The point of the debate is to convince people that their concerns are things which can be overcome. It’s essentially the same path we are taking to universal marijuana and same sex marriage legalization. Because the basic objection to single payer is that “we can’t convince enough people to support it” and other issues have shown that that’s simply not true.
I want to be like our English friends and never worry about health insurance again. I think my employer would very much like to get out of the game as well. I know exactly what we pay in direct costs and have a pretty good idea about the indirect ones as well. The concept of running this whole thing through a company is really pretty bizarre.
American exceptionalism, my ass.
“Gaming the system” has been going on for some time. One aspect of it is unbundling services.
The government says it will pay $50 for an office visit. The doctor therefore charges $50 for an office visit - plus $10 for copying the record and $2 for a DRE.
I used to work in IT medical records. It made a difference to our Medicare billing status if patients were admitted thru the ER or from the skilled nursing facility next door. (I got a bonus and an award for figuring this out.)
Regards,
Shodan
[QUOTE=Red Wiggler]
The point of the debate is to convince people that their concerns are things which can be overcome. It’s essentially the same path we are taking to universal marijuana and same sex marriage legalization. Because the basic objection to single payer is that “we can’t convince enough people to support it” and other issues have shown that that’s simply not true.
[/QUOTE]
Well, except that it’s a handwave. Let me put it this way…why don’t we have a single payer system NOW? I mean, the side of right and light has wanted one. They have been doing their best to convince people it’s the best thing ever. They have pointed out that Europe and many other countries have one, in one form or another. Yet here we are.
And I want to see the US build a boat load of nuclear power plants and send manned missions to Mars…and I wouldn’t be opposed to a single payer UHC type system in the US either. I doubt I’ll see any of that in my lifetime, though.
'Cause really we are just like everyone else, right? Tell you what…hold your breath until we get either UHC or a single payer system and see how that works out. Everyone else has done it, so the US being just like everyone else, well, we’ll do it too. Any day now. Keep holding that breath and telling yourself that we are just like everyone else and hand wave away the fact that even if no one else opposes it, the Republicans do, and considering that they have at least 30 % of the population who votes for them regularly that this is enough to block it form happening, at least until you manage to convince such a large majority of the American people that it shifts the whole system…something that most other countries didn’t and don’t have to do to get something like this through.
Myself, I think I’ll see the last Game of Thrones book published and read long before that happens. This will be just after the US takes a firmer stand on GhG emissions and Global Warming…
So the TL;DR summary of your point is that the U.S. is exceptional because we have the GOP and less exceptional European countries do not. Right?
I’m not sure OP is getting answers to his question. So far, discounting a “think” tank analysis, we have one genuine conservative worried that doctors, who at present spend much money interfacing to private insurance bureaucracies, will add $12 to his office visits because … (Because what? Because government auditors are less competent than private auditors?)
You seem to have mistaken me for someone who doesn’t think the US should adopt a single payer model.
Make no mistake, it would be terrible for me personally on a financial level. I’m a lawyer working in a field that will largely cease to exist (or at least the amount of litigation in that field will drop to near zero) if that happens. My wife is a manager for a human resources outsourcing firm, which basically means she’s a third party health insurance administrator. Her field will entirely cease to exist.
So you are an altruist willing to support policies good for society that would be bad for you personally? Thank you much! We were recently assured in a nearby thread that such altruists are rarer than seven-leaf clovers.
Now go back to North Korea or France or Canada or whatever communist country brainwashed you so bad!
[QUOTE=septimus]
So the TL;DR summary of your point is that the U.S. is exceptional because we have the GOP and less exceptional European countries do not. Right?
[/QUOTE]
You should have taken the time to read it and not try and summarize something you didn’t bother reading. No, my point is that our political system and political/social/corporate climate is different than Europe’s, or Canada’s, or Japan’s or anyone else, so saying that they have done this as an argument that we should ignores all of those differences.
But, by all means, just keep saying that the US is just like everyone else and holding your breath for UHC/Single Payer health…and scratching your head in puzzlement when year after year it doesn’t happen. You’d think that people would have learned from the Obamacare/ACA fiasco that even with a large political majority as the Democrats had at the federal level, you STILL can’t push something through and have it working without major political digging in by the opposition unless and until you get BOTH parties (and the voters, and business, etc) on board.
Until you guys can wish away the Republican party (or get them on board with this…or, better yet, get THEM to push this, since it would be like Nixon and China if the Republicans pushed UHC or a single payer system) and/or a large majority of voters and businesses it’s not going to happen, despite examples of how it works everywhere else.
To be fair the old boy was pretty out of it much of the time. I truly believe he wasn’t lying when he remembered personally liberating Nazi Death Camps. That was his true recollection.
For a brief shining moment during the '80s the leaders of three of the most powerful countries on earth were led by leaders non compos mentis.
Fortunately Ronnie Alzheimer’s and Maggie Dementia were balanced by Leonid Needs-Two-People-To-Hold-Him-Up if the Russian Bear got up to his old tricks.
Hi. I’m new here. There is an argument I hear from conservatives that I don’t think has been mentioned:
The United States basically “carries” the rest of the world when it comes to medical technology innovation. So if we went to a more cost-controlled healthcare system, it would stifle this innovation.
I did read it, and read your latest as well.
My summary still stands.
Who’s puzzled? I’m reminded of Johnny Cash who, when the Folsom Prison warden asked him not to remind prisoners they were in prison, replied “Do you think they’ve forgotten?”
XT, do you think those complaining about U.S. rejecting UHC are unaware of the GOP’s opposition?
So you’re saying we should give up pushing for it just because we haven’t succeeded so far and it’s hard. Thanks for the input.
:smack: Good grief. No, I’m not saying that at all. Obviously though what I am saying is going in one ear and out the other with most of you, so I think I’ll leave you guys to the circle jerk and just laugh when this comes up over and over again at all the puzzled faces wondering why everyone else can do this but the US can’t, since are really no differences between the US and everyone else.
Have fun storming the castle…