Medicare for All Would Cut Poverty by Over 20 Percent

[Applewood]

He should go to England where he can't get decent healthcare and has to wait indefinitely for necessary surgeries.   

That's it right there.  People who advocate for government run  health care, more often than not, don't see the downsides.  They point to these countries which offer "free" health care as being wonderful, but I doubt any of them have had any experience with the health care system in those countries. 

Yeah I have heard people from these countries say they love their health care.  But many of them are like a fella I met from Winnipeg whose only experience had to do with routine care for his small children.  He was singing the praises of the Canadian system -- how his kids would get immunizations and routine care for free.  But I wonder if his tune would change if, God forbid, one of his kids came down with a catastrophic illness.

When government sticks its big nose into business, the result is always disaster.

[skeeter]

Actually, it was when the government got involved in healthcare in the 1960's when healthcare expenses began to skyrocket.

The more the government is involved, the more expensive healthcare costs are.


It's good that you are on record as wanting inaffordable healthcare and years of waiting for critical life-saving procedures.

Thanks for representing the irrational, uncaring left on TBR, @OfTheCross .

It's good to see up close and personal how people who don't care actually think.......

I remember my mother paying for care with a check on the way out of the doctor's office. Before the government decided to 'help'.

[kevindavis007]

Actually, it was when the government got involved in healthcare in the 1960's when healthcare expenses began to skyrocket.

The more the government is involved, the more expensive healthcare costs are.


It's good that you are on record as wanting inaffordable healthcare and years of waiting for critical life-saving procedures.

Thanks for representing the irrational, uncaring left on TBR, @OfTheCross .

It's good to see up close and personal how people who don't care actually think.......

Also, the Government is going to get involved in our everyday lives. Basically monitor what we eat and what we do if we have MFA.

[txradioguy]

https://jacobinmag.com/2019/09/medicare-for-all-poverty-out-of-pocket-expenses

Jacobin Magazine...as in a magazine for Jacobin Socialists like Bernie Sanders and the rest of the clown car that is the 2020 Dem hopefuls for President.

Yeah...that's a credible place for accurate effects of Medicare for all. 

[txradioguy]

It's not an unprecedented idea. In many places it's been in effect for more than 50 years.



Australia   1975
Austria   1967
Bahrain   1957
Belgium   1945
Brunei   1958
Canada   1966
Cyprus   1980
Denmark   1973
Finland   1972
France   1974
Germany   1941
Greece   1983
Hong Kong   1993
Iceland   1990
Ireland   1977
Israel   1995
Italy   1978
Japan   1938
Kuwait   1950
Luxembourg   1973
Netherlands   1966
New Zealand   1938
Norway   1912
Portugal   1979
Singapore   1993
Slovenia   1972
South Korea   1988
Spain   1986
Sweden   1955
Switzerland   1994
United Arab Emirates   1971
United Kingdom   1948

table

They also have sky high tax rates to pay for their universal health care...which we'd have to implement...something you Socialists always leave out of your propaganda.

On and what's the population of those countries in comparison to the U.S.?

[Cyber Liberty]

Jacobin Magazine...as in a magazine for Jacobin Socialists like Bernie Sanders and the rest of the clown car that is the 2020 Dem hopefuls for President.

Yeah...that's a credible place for accurate effects of Medicare for all. 

"Jacobin," as in "Robespierre."

[Cyber Liberty]

They also have sky high tax rates to pay for their universal health care...which we'd have to implement...something you Socialists always leave out of your propaganda.

On and what's the population of those countries in comparison to the U.S.?

Almost all of those socialist paradises are mono-cultural, too.

[Bigun]

Actually, it was when the government got involved in healthcare in the 1960's when healthcare expenses began to skyrocket.

The more the government is involved, the more expensive healthcare costs are.


It's good that you are on record as wanting inaffordable healthcare and years of waiting for critical life-saving procedures.

Thanks for representing the irrational, uncaring left on TBR, @OfTheCross .

It's good to see up close and personal how people who don't care actually think.......

 

When I was growing up the family Dr. was a man by the name of Kenneth Straw.  The relationship with my dad was he didn't know exactly WHEN he would get paid but he KNEW that he would get paid as he had never failed to.  We didn't run to the Dr. every time someone got a hangnail either.  You had to be truly sick or your life otherwise in danger.  Most minor medical emergencies were handled right at home in those days.

[txradioguy]

"Jacobin," as in "Robespierre."

No I understand the association with Robespierre...but in this case it has to do with Jacobin Socialism.

Jacobin
https://www.jacobinmag.com
Jacobin is a leading voice of the American left, offering socialist perspectives on politics, economics, and culture.

[txradioguy]

Almost all of those socialist paradises are mono-cultural, too.

Especially the Scandinavian countries that Socialists like OTC and Bernie Sanders are so fond of.

Primarily white...closed borders...very few if any people allowed to immigrate their from other countries.

[Cyber Liberty]

No I understand the association with Robespierre...but in this case it has to do with Jacobin Socialism.

The reason for being may have been updated, but the thirst for blood has not.  The poster of this Topic would have no problem wheeling out a Guillotine if that would help tamp down our objections to his socialist paradise.

[musiclady]

That's it right there.  People who advocate for government run  health care, more often than not, don't see the downsides.  They point to these countries which offer "free" health care as being wonderful, but I doubt any of them have had any experience with the health care system in those countries. 

Yeah I have heard people from these countries say they love their health care.  But many of them are like a fella I met from Winnipeg whose only experience had to do with routine care for his small children.  He was singing the praises of the Canadian system -- how his kids would get immunizations and routine care for free.  But I wonder if his tune would change if, God forbid, one of his kids came down with a catastrophic illness.

When government sticks its big nose into business, the result is always disaster.

Or even non-catastrophic.  We have friends (actually relatives of relatives) in Canada whose daughter tore her ACL playing HS soccer.

Because of socialized medicine in Canada it was months before they could do a thing about it, and she suffered.

Here in America, she would have been cared for immediately and recovered.

Socialized healthcare is inefficient, and downright dangerous.

Anyone who advocates it is either ignorant or nuts.

[musiclady]

When I was growing up the family Dr. was a man by the name of Kenneth Straw.  The relationship with my dad was he didn't know exactly WHEN he would get paid but he KNEW that he would get paid as he had never failed to.  We didn't run to the Dr. every time someone got a hangnail either.  You had to be truly sick or your life otherwise in danger.  Most minor medical emergencies were handled right at home in those days.

Exactly.

Any of us who remember medical care before the government got it’s filthy fingers in it knows the damage it has done.

[Sanguine]

The Fallacy of Medicare for All
By Bill George

April 24, 2019

...While offering all U.S. citizens free health care using a single-payer system sounds attractive as a political talking point, actually implementing Medicare for All would require a complex restructuring of a multi-trillion dollar industry. The likely result? A disaster.

Covering all Americans under Medicare for All could potentially add another 189 million people to the government’s payrolls, which would swamp the current government approval and payment system—especially since the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services require prior approval for many medical tests and procedures. More importantly, the Medicare and Medicaid payment system is almost entirely based on fee for service, wherein hospitals, physicians, and pharmaceutical dispensers are paid for services rendered. Naturally, this can incentivize doctors and hospitals to require more office visits, do more procedures, and conduct more tests to get paid more.

These perverse incentives are exacerbated by underpayment schedules in which Medicare reimburses well below hospital costs. In 2017, Medicare and Medicare reimbursement was $76.8 billion below cost and hospitals provided an additional $38.4 billion in uncompensated care. These underpayments force hospitals to increase costs to patients covered by commercial insurance. This cost-shifting distorts the billing system and places an unnecessary cost burden on non-government patients and their employers.

Medicare for All proposes to eliminate the entire commercial insurance industry—putting 538,600 people out of work. The impact on the financial stability of hospitals and doctors would be staggering. A Navigant study found that a typical mid-sized non-profit hospital system would have a net loss of 22% under the plan. I estimate that half of all hospitals would go out of business, especially smaller hospitals in rural areas.

The elimination of existing systems would be offset by a large increase in government payrolls. A Mercatus Center study estimated that Medicare for All would cost the federal government around $32 trillion. These estimates do not include likely increases in Medicare and Medicaid rates required to lessen losses to hospitals and doctors.

Who will pay for these enormous costs? The federal government cannot cover them without new revenue, as the current U.S. debt is already $22 trillion, with the annual deficit exceeding $1 trillion per year in 2020 and beyond. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates that Medicare for All would require tripling of payroll taxes or more than doubling all other taxes. The Mercatus Center, however, found that “doubling all federal individual and corporate income taxes going forward would be insufficient to fully finance the plan.”...

https://fortune.com/2019/04/24/medicare-for-all-plan-costs/

[txradioguy]

The reason for being may have been updated, but the thirst for blood has not.  The poster of this Topic would have no problem wheeling out a Guillotine if that would help tamp down our objections to his socialist paradise.

Of that I have no doubt.

[Sanguine]

The Costs of Medicare for All Are Rising Already
Charles Blahous
August 26, 2019 Health Care

After my study of the costs of Medicare for All (M4A) was published last July, a fierce debate erupted over whether M4A, while dramatically increasing the costs borne by federal taxpayers, might nevertheless reduce total U.S. health expenditures. Now, just one year after my findings, we have substantial additional evidence that M4A would further increase, not reduce, national health spending.

To be clear, no one on either side of this debate questioned my central finding that M4A would increase federal costs by an unprecedented amount, likely between $32.6 trillion and $38.8 trillion over 10 years—a federal tab so large that even doubling all projected federal individual and corporate income taxes couldn’t finance it. Yet M4A advocates continued to believe that it could bring national health spending down. That’s become substantially more difficult to argue in light of subsequent events.
....

Subsequent to these studies, but prior to mine, Sen. Sanders introduced his M4A bill. That bill specified that health provider payment rates under M4A would be determined by the same methods used to set Medicare payment rates, which would average about 40% less than private insurance rates over the first 10 years of M4A.

Obviously, if one assumes that payments for all health treatments now covered by private insurance are reduced by about 40%, such a dramatic cost-reduction assumption would likely lead to the conclusion that total health spending would decline. My study duly reported the numbers that would derive from this cost-saving assumption but at the same time noted that “it is likely that the actual cost of M4A would be substantially greater than these estimates,” and that they should be regarded as a “lower bound.” For one thing, federal lawmakers have historically balked at implementing provider payment reductions much smaller and less sudden than those. For another, dramatically reducing provider payments (and thus health care supply) at the same time that M4A markedly increases the demand for health services would almost certainly disrupt Americans’ timely access to quality health care, precipitating unpredictable political fallout.

Although my study was clear that the actual costs of M4A would likely be substantially higher than they would be under the aggressive assumption that all provider payments are suddenly cut to Medicare rates, mischaracterizations of my conclusions proliferated. Some M4A advocates wrote (and continue to write) that my study concluded that M4A would reduce national health spending, even though my study did not say this, and despite various Fact Checkers calling out this claim as a distortion....

https://economics21.org/medicare-for-all-costs-rising-already

[Sanguine]

The Costs of a National Single-Payer Healthcare System
Charles Blahous
MERCATUS WORKING PAPER
All studies in the Mercatus Working Paper series have followed a rigorous process of academic evaluation,
including (except where otherwise noted) at least one double-blind peer review. Working Papers present an
author’s provisional findings, which, upon further consideration and revision, are likely to be republished in an
academic journal. The opinions expressed in Mercatus Working Papers are the authors’ and do not represent
official positions of the Mercatus Center or George Mason University...

https://www.mercatus.org/system/files/blahous-costs-medicare-mercatus-working-paper-v1_1.pdf

Downloads a .pdf of the paper.

[Sanguine]

Justin Haskins: How much would 'Medicare-for-all' REALLY cost the middle class? The answer is shocking

By Justin Haskins | Fox News

  ...
During the most recent round of Democratic presidential debates, nearly all the leading candidates reiterated their commitment to transition the U.S. health insurance industry to a "Medicare-for-All," government-run model. Some promised to do it more quickly than others, but in the end, the result would be the same: the federal government would control health care within a decade.

Single-payer health care systems are plagued by countless problems that should make them an unattractive option for lawmakers—including rationing, service shortages, and bureaucratic inefficiencies. But perhaps the question most important to many 2020 voters, especially those with full-time jobs, will be how Democrats plan to pay for a gargantuan government takeover of health care, one that would include paying for nearly all health care services, reproductive care, and even pharmaceuticals.

....

However, my new analysis of the costs of single-payer health care, which is based on well-established existing studies from think tanks on both sides of the aisle, shows that tens of millions of American families would end up paying significantly more for health care under a model similar to the "Medicare-for-All" plan proposed by Sanders and endorsed or slightly modified by most of the other leading presidential candidates.

My analysis is straightforward. Using IRS data, I calculated how much in additional taxes each IRS income bracket would need to pay to cover the costs of "Medicare-for-all" in 2022, the first year of full implementation under the legislation previously proposed by Sanders. I assumed Democrats would require tax filers to cover roughly the same proportion of the costs for "Medicare-for-All" as they paid for total federal income tax revenues prior to the passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. I also assumed businesses would pay $400 billion in new taxes in the first year of implementation, a figure that’s in line with Sanders’ own estimates.

If "Medicare-for-All"’s total cost for the first 10 years is in line with projections produced by the American Action Forum, Mercatus Center, and Urban Institute—roughly $32 trillion to $38 trillion—I estimate 40 million to 60 million households would end up paying more in new taxes than they would receive in health care benefits. Millions of these households would lose more than $10,000 annually, even if it is assumed they would otherwise need to pay a full health insurance deductible and some out-of-pocket expenses under a private health insurance model.

Contrary to the claims made by the leading Democratic candidates, millions of middle-class earners would be hit particularly hard under "Medicare-for-All." For example, filers earning $50,000 to $75,000 would likely need to pay on average $7,773 to $9,171 more in new taxes. Those families earning $75,000 to $100,000 would pay $12,612 to $14,880 more. Most households with more than $100,000 income would pay close to or more than $20,000 in additional taxes.

In many cases, these costs far outweigh the projected average employee contribution for employer-provided health insurance—about $1,965 for individuals and $6,752 for families.

.......
To illustrate this reality, consider the following: Even if the federal government were to confiscate every penny belonging to every single one of the richest 400 Americans—including billionaires like Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos—it would only amount to less than $3 trillion, which is less than 10 percent of the cost of single-payer health care in the first 10 years alone, even under the most optimistic scenarios.

"Medicare-for-All" wouldn’t only create significant problems for the health care industry, it would financially decimate millions of middle-class households, many of whom already have access to health insurance plans they like.
...

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/medicare-for-all-middle-class-justin-haskins

[Bigun]

Exactly.

Any of us who remember medical care before the government got it’s filthy fingers in it knows the damage it has done.

  and the same is true for everything else they have gotten their filthy fingers in without any authority to do so @musiclady

They are in fact, KILLING the goose that lays the golden eggs!  In the year 1900 government at all levels consumed less tha 12% of GDP. After WWII it had risen to 22% and now is beyond 50%.  THAT is a real problem!

Government Growth Big-picture Report

[Jazzhead]

Medical insurance has traditionally been among the most regulated products you can buy.    These calls to get the government out of the insurance market don't reflect reality, either now or in the "good old days". 

[Bigun]

Medical insurance has traditionally been among the most regulated products you can buy.    These calls to get the government out of the insurance market don't reflect reality, either now or in the "good old days".

Very true!  Hence my call to try it without all the government interference!

[Cyber Liberty]

Medical insurance has traditionally been among the most regulated products you can buy.    These calls to get the government out of the insurance market don't reflect reality, either now or in the "good old days".

What's new is the leftists have decided to just say, "Screw it, we're just going to run everybody's health care directly.  We can do it better because we're smarter and more altruistic."

[Cyber Liberty]

Very true!  Hence my call to try it without all the government interference!

I think his point was, "Hey, the government already regulates it so heavily, what difference does it make if the government just takes it over completely!"

[truth_seeker]

The heros of healthcare:

--Hillary Clinton failed but neverwent away

--Romney which led to Obamacare

--CJ Roberts (that GW Bush gift)

John McCain cast the deciding Senate vote to NOT kill Obamacare


Obama himself, issued forth lies after lies, about Obamacare. It would eliminate the uninsured, etc.

[Bigun]

What's new is the leftists have decided to just say, "Screw it, we're just going to run everybody's health care directly.  We can do it better because we're smarter and more altruistic."

Perhaps Mr. @Jazzhead would be kind enough to explain to us just why he thinks all that regulation of this market is necessary.