Quote:
Originally Posted by ohhwanderlust
What's wrong with Medicare for all?
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As the Left-Wing Urban Institute noted:
In total, federal spending would increase by about $2.5 trillion (257.6 percent) in 2017. Federal expenditures would increase by about $32.0 trillion (232.7 percent) between 2017 and 2026.
https://www.urban.org/sites/default/...-Care-Plan.pdf
If you want to do something positive, then try implementing Free Market Reforms.
First, have the federal government withhold Medicaid funding from States that refuse to pursue anti-trust legislation against hospital cartels, and repeal or rescind the State legislation that created the hospital monopolies and cartels that illegally collude to illegally fix prices above market rates.
So you'd pay $2,900 for child-birth instead of $9,200 and $13,000 for heart-bypass surgery, instead of $29,000 to $42,000. Those are the market rates compared to the monopoly cartel rates charged by hospitals in my area. In your area, the market rate may be higher or lower depending on the Cost-of-Living in your area compared to mine.
Note that when the American Hospital Association lobbied the State legislatures in the late 1930s and early 1940s to enact legislation creating those monopolies and cartels, they argued that the free care they would provide to the indigent and low-income families would off-set the economic harm resulting from monopolies.
And now, they practically refuse to provide that free care, then complain bitterly and expect tax-payers to foot the bill when the do.
Once you do that, you need to eliminate hospitals.
Of all things, it was the Communist Bloc that recognized the grotesque inefficiency and ineffectiveness of the Hospital Model and applied a corollary of Capitalist Theory: Diversification & Specialization.
By deconstructing hospitals into smaller more efficient and effect specialized clinics and polyclinics, they saved $Billions.
After West Germany and East Germany united, the German Minister of Health noted how efficient the system in former East Germany was, and how much less it cost to operate. He then started shifting away from the Hospital Model in the former West Germany to the system used in the former East Germany and saved $Billions, averting a financial crisis in the healthcare system.
You don't have "In-Network/Out-of-Network" auto repair or body-shops for your auto insurance, and you don't have "In-Network/Out-of-Network" roofers and plumbers for your home-owner's insurance, yet you have "In-Network/Out-of-Network" health insurance.
Why is that?
That's because the American Hospital Association lobbied all the State legislatures to enact laws permitting it.
The State legislatures regulate insurance companies, not the federal government, so it has to be the State legislatures who repeal and rescind such laws, so that you have a Free Market.
And, before some ignoramus interjects the specious and facetious suggestion that you can't shop for hospitals while you're having a heart attack, consider that most intelligent people will already have selected a hospital, and even if they didn't, it wouldn't matter, since hospitals would now be charging competitive market rates, instead of arbitrarily price-gouging patients.
The State legislatures can also repeal or rescind the myriad pieces of legislation that drive up the cost of health insurance by requiring people to purchase coverage they neither need nor want. The vast majority of people over 40 don't need pregnancy coverage, yet they're forced to pay for it.
In a Free Market, you buy only what you need and not what you don't need. That will reduce costs measurably.
People used to profit off their life insurance when it was tied to their catastrophic health insurance, until the American Hospital Association lobbied Congress to change the IRS tax code in 1954 to prevent that. That law needs to be repealed as well.
It would help if the federal government would penalize employers for providing group health insurance. That would allow people to choose their own healthcare plans, while still allowing their employers to pay all or part of the cost as part of their benefits, which is how it worked up until 1946. For those who claim larger pools lower costs, then an extremely large pool within a State would reduce costs more than smaller employer pools.
Once you've shifted to a Free Market and allowed it to operate without interference, then you can determine where problems exist and move to resolve them.
That's much less costly than over-laying some half-baked federally run universal plan on a broken system.
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