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You're the one not getting it, it's not a pre-payment, the money you're putting in for umpteen years was paying for claims along the way.
That's the point. Have anyone who wishes to buy into Medicare at the $160,000 (average) per person 'pay along the way' price, and then treat everyone on Medicare equally from that point on regardless of age. Same coverage options. Same premiums. Same co-pays.
It used to be that you went to the doctor, paid a reasonable fee to the receptionist and then you were done. If doctors and hospitals didn't have the burden of paying people just to handle insurance claims, they could charge lower fees.
My GP said he dreams about building a hut on a beach and charging $50 bucks cash to patients. They could afford it, and he could live on it.
You're just exchanging the insurance middleman for the government middleman.
No thanks.
As I pointed out earlier (see pasted below) there is seemingly an advantage to having a public program as the "middleman," because "profits" can go into public funds and, as others have been pointing out, there is actually less admin overhead (again, see pasted below). At the very least there should be savings on advertising.
I have not read every page of this thread, but my impression is that some people are arguing primarily as a matter of principle - they hate anything that smacks of "big government" and don't want government doing anything that it does not have to do. But what if the switch to a public program is simply more practical in this particular case? I would love to see the best arguments and evidence against the claims that a public "middleman" would be better/more practical. Have I missed any knock-out evidence or arguments for thinking the public approach would be worse? (Aside from the knee-jerk less-government-is-better principle.) I generally agree with the less-government principle, but not in a knee-jerk way. I consider evidence and arguments for exceptions to the general rule. So if there is good reason to think that a particular government program would be more practical, then I would be in favor of it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gaylenwoof
Insurance companies, in general, provide no tangible net benefits to society that couldn't be achieved in some other way. The entire industry is, essentially, a giant economic parasite.
The primary consumer benefit of insurance is some degree of protection from sudden devastating financial burdens that could leave them literally homeless or imprisoned, or dead. This benefit to consumers could, in principle, be provided by a public program that does essentially the same thing that insurance companies do, namely, collect money in the form of monthly payments that are invested until such a time as a payout is required. The difference would be that any net profits from the payments/investments would go to the public treasury rather than into the pockets of the insurance industry and its investors.
Bottom line: A lot of people who currently make profits from services that do no tangible net social good would have to look elsewhere - hopefully toward industries that do produce tangible goods and/or socially valuable services.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Julian658
According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, administrative costs in Medicare are only about 2 percent of operating expenditures. Defenders of the insurance industry estimate administrative costs as 17 percent of revenue.
Insurance industry-funded studies exclude private plans’ marketing costs and profits from their calculation of administrative costs. Even so, Medicare’s overhead is dramatically lower.
It will not drive prices down, since prices for medical care are controlled by hospital monopolies and cartels, and doctors who are employed by such monopolies and cartels.
And section 6001 of the ACA...
"Section 6001 of the Affordable Care Act of 2010 amended section 1877 of the Social Security Act to impose additional requirements for physician-owned hospitals to qualify for the whole hospital and rural provider exceptions. A physician-owned hospital is now generally prohibited from expanding facility capacity."
Nothing says free market like exclusion forced by monopolies.
"Section 6001 of the Affordable Care Act of 2010 amended section 1877 of the Social Security Act to impose additional requirements for physician-owned hospitals to qualify for the whole hospital and rural provider exceptions. A physician-owned hospital is now generally prohibited from expanding facility capacity."
Nothing says free market like exclusion forced by monopolies.
The overwhelming number of hospitals are owned by Corporate America. The number of physicians that are now on a salary basis working for these hospitals continues to grow at a very fast pace. MOm and pop doc offices will soon be a thing of the past.
Medicare for all. Cut out the middle man! Do we really need health insurance companies to make billions in profit? Why not add a pool of healthy young people to the Medicare Plan?
Why not negotiate a price cut from the Pharma industry? Why do they charge so much more in the US than in Canada?
Sure, keep the private health plans. But, make the private plans compete with the public option.
"Medicare for all"
We have seen for YEARS how well (NOT) the fed govt does in handling health care via the VA.
The fed also has done such a bag up job with the Indians.
NO THANKS!
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