Single payer is cheaper. The US spends more per capita than any other developed nation and is not even capable of providing health care to all of its citizens.
Move to single payer, kill the medical insurance industry, and save these costs:
The health insurance industry employs approximately 605,000-912,000 people directly. The top 10 companies generate over $1.5 trillion in combined revenue annually. Conservative estimates suggest these companies spend $45-90 billion annually on employee salaries.
> The US spends more per capita than any other developed nation and is not even capable of providing health care to all of its citizens.
US has medicare and medicaid. It actually spends more than most other countries. I guess they need to spend more to save money?
Again throwing around stats about health insurance industry is not an argument. That money gets spent on something unless you think there is some grand cabal of health insurance companies to do make-work and hire people and set money on fire for no reason. Why doesn't some greedy capitalist start a health insurance company, set slightly less money on fire and provide great healthcare?
Yes, exactly. We spend more far more and get less because we do not have a single payer system like the rest of the world. We are lining the pockets of healthcare execs and unnecessarily employing hundreds of thousands of people at insurance companies and private companies to manage employee benefits.
The reason you have health insurance, and you don't just pay for healthcare, is because pooling together a lot of people and paying for all of them is cheaper than paying for each individually.
You've probably noticed that, the bigger the company, the better the health insurance plans. Why is that? Their risk pool is bigger.
Follow the logic. What's the biggest risk pool you can use? The entire US population. What would then provide the lowest per-capita cost? Spreading the cost across the entire US population. It's economies of scale.
Bonus: we can also eliminate much of the administrative aspect of healthcare because we are no longer coordinating thousands of separate insurance entities. You mentioned make-work - yes, we have that. Why does a hospital need 500 billing specialists? You tell me.
What do you think is so unique about the US that it is incapable of having similar pricing and quality of care compared to the rest of the developed world?
"The US spends more in public spending on healthcare than other countries" isn't some great gotcha, it's proof that healthcare access in the US is vastly more expensive than in those companies.
Some great quotes from your own link about US healthcare:
> The underlying challenges in fixing U.S. healthcare may be multi-faceted and complex, but the overall diagnosis is clear: costs are out of control.
> In other words, costs seem to be out of whack across the board in the United States, regardless of whether it is private or public care being discussed.
> Spending keeps rising, but the effect of that spending seems to have decreasing marginal returns on life expectancy – a metric that is an important indicator for the overall effectiveness of any health system.
> It’s clear that Americans aren’t getting bang for their buck when it comes to medical treatment – so how is it to be fixed?
Your own link comprehensively and thoroughly disputes your original assertion:
> If you think health insurance is expensive now, wait until it's free!
> The only argument I hear is "other countries do it", which is just unpersuasive. It's not a serious argument. Propose something better
Given that all those countries pay less for the healthcare they provide AND have better morbidity and life expectancy outcomes, I dunno, that sounds "better" to me, but apparently you have a different definition?
The US pays more per capita for healthcare than any developed nation. We should redirect those funds to more taxes to pay for Medicare for all. Costs will go down and your healthcare will no longer be tied to your employment. As a bonus, everyone gets healthcare.
Don't be naive. Medicare reimbursement rates are artificially fixed below the market rate in order to hold down the federal budget. This kind of works right now because Medicare ends up with a hidden cross subsidy from commercial health plans with higher rates (often explicitly set as a fixed multiple of the Medicare rate). If we put everyone on "Medicare For All" then those subsidies will disappear and queues will get much longer. So not everyone "gets" healthcare if they have to wait a year for an elective procedure.
Also, original Medicare Part A/B doesn't cover certain types of healthcare at all such as prescription drugs. So not everyone on Medicare "gets" healthcare today. That's why many Medicare beneficiaries choose to pay out of pocket for Drug Coverage (Part D), Medicare Advantage, and/or Medicare Supplement (Medigap) insurance.
Sure but that’s not gonna happen. Workers mostly ever only get things taken away these days. It wouldn’t mean that money is available somewhere else all of a sudden to pay for healthcare.
If Congress could decide to agree on something, they announce taxes are being raised by X% to provide Medicare for all next year. Next year, employers stop providing healthcare via insurance companies and everyone signs up for medicare. Done.
One of the huge fights about ACA from the left was so-called "Cadillac Plans": Unions negotiated excellent medical insurance coverage in lieu of wages for their members. If you suddenly axed employer-provided coverage, nearly every union in the US would want to renegotiate contracts to account for that.
It's easy to imagine Plex has some db sharding going on at their scale, or that they host in multiple geographic regions for regional compliance, or on multiple cloud providers.
Hey AI, I'm looking for a Halloween costume for $100. I need a period appropriate wig, ratty looking pants, an 1800s style blouse, a tricorne hat, and an eye patch. Show me pics of your choices, ensure the price is within budget, then buy it and have it shipped to arrive to me by October 15th.
I took a hybrid approach -- Unifi for everything except the firewall, and a Firewalla for that. I'm overall quite happy with it, although you won't get a single pane of glass for management.
This. I don't use their gateways/ security devices anymore. I run ONSense at every edge which allows me to so some really nice things with respect to remote access for non-home sites.
The median US household income is $80k and has a savings rate (profit) of 3.6%, or $2880.
This $2.5B fine is equivalent to the average US household being fined $115 or, basically, a traffic ticket.