Sanders: ‘I'm Going to Introduce a Medicare-for-All, Single-Payer Program’

a reply to: Flatfish

Even on the graph you provided, Medicare's administrative cost is less than half that of the private insurers.

I would think that their cost would be much less because they only reimburse about $0.20 on the dollar.

originally posted by: BuzzyWigs
I just have to wonder if participants here are concerned more with MONEY or with HEALTH. For my part, I'm concerned about both, but health is MORE important.

I wonder how many of the members on this thread are just plain pissed off over the idea that their premium might contribute to the cost of some poor person's insulin or a baby's hospitalization with whooping cough caused by wack parents who refused to vax.

Just wondering.

Hospitals are in collusion with the insurance providers is an overcharging corruption. But we have no government to address the issue because big government is bad and anarchy is good.

My premium $1500 per month with HUGE deductibles. How come your's is so cheap?

How on earth does yours cost that much? Are you going through ACA or something? I'm a single person and mine is about $100/mo, though that's employer provided. When I looked up what my premium would be under ObamaCare it was more like $1500/mo.

What do you think ACA is? It's basically just a gift to hospitals and insurance companies. You want government to step in, and they did. You're welcome.

a reply to: havok

the free market isn't what has caused the raising health care costs though...
we haven't had a free market in a long time. if we did, we would either have far lower cost or far fewer hospitals and doctors since in some areas of the country, the majority of the revenue was coming into the health providers is coming from gov't programs even before obamacare. in order for the free market to fix this, we would have to start reducing the amount of money the government is handing out, very, very slowly, till it was far less than it is now..

but, there is one small, tiny problem with both your let the free market correct the problem and the single payer system. it's called investments.... like people's iras, pension plans, ect.... we saw first hand what happened when the dirivatives market fell apart on them, whole countries sank, like iceland... well, I got a feeling that something much similar would happen if we killed the insurance companies, everything from IRAs to banks, to city and state investment plans would get hit rather hard.

a reply to: FauxMulder

Those graphs do not take into account the full CEO compensation package. So those numbers are not accurate.

If you consider these numbers accurate:

"In 2011, Medicare covered 48.7 million people. Total expenditures in 2011 were $549.1 billion. This money comes from the Medicare Trust Funds."

According to this: www.medicare.gov...

Then a policy would cost about $12,000 per year. That is about 50% less than private insurers for a comparable policy. If that is the case then the difference is the overhead of executive pay.

If Sander's idea is so wrong, and Medicare would not be competitive, then make it available and the private insurers can just compete with it and beat it. I don't understand what is wrong with competition. Medicare should be able to compete with all the other providers.

I get there's problem with the way Medicare is funded. However, that should not stop it from being available.

Just change "You can get Part A at age 65" to "You can get Part A at age 28". Problem solved.

Maybe I'm all wrong. But I'm sure the partisan fanatics will shoot down anything that helps people.

a reply to: dawnstar

You know it's a scam full of corruption because unlike car insurance, healthcare providers never advertise on TV because the cartel can charge whatever they want.

a reply to: dfnj2015

Thanks, yes, I understand how they rip us off and work hand in hand to keep costs so high.

I remember when my now-grown daughter was a baby, a doctor we saw thought I was paying out of pocket and charged me x amount. When I produced my insurance card she scratched out the amount and made it 3 times higher....knowing the insurance would pay her more than I would out of pocket. That kind of crap needs to stop.

OTOH, I took clients for yEARS to the public health clinics and the public pediatric clinic at what was then the county hospital (General - has to cover everyone). We never had to wait to get in, the docs were the same docs from the hospitals, but they rotate through doing pro bono work in the clinics.

Again, we NEVER had to wait to get in. Ev. Er.
It depends on local management more than anything.
Yes, the VA is an example. Some facilities give GREAT care with NO problems. Others are poorly managed and staffed. That just is what it is. It has to do with management, not the structure itself. These people imagining the worst have never used the public system that is in place, I am pretty sure.

I also worked in a community health clinic that was a 501c3 for the uninsured. There was NEVER a wait to get in.

Someone the other day was saying "I don't want this program (Obamacare) because I can just go to a Community Health Clinic where you don't pay or pay only what you can." Left me scratching my head......thinking.....

RIGHT! So why would you want to close those clinics? Because getting rid of the public single-payer system would do just that!

They forget that they wouldn't have to pay any premiums or bills or co-pays.
So, I repeat:
Is it worrying about the money?
Or is it about worrying you won't be cared for yourself?


Which is more the issue for those who are against it?

Having worked in the public health system and community health clinics myself, and also been a patient in the public system when I had my second child - all BEFORE Obamacare (I was retired by the time the ACA was implemented), I KNOW what it's like. We didn't have to wait. We got right in. We didn't have to pay at the time, and we saw real doctors and real nurses who had real equipment and real skill. We made modest payments on the services until it was paid off, at NO INTEREST.



That is how we roll. No one's getting rich off of the suffering of others.

originally posted by: DBCowboy
a reply to: Flatfish

I'm not saying socialized medicine won't happen, but I can say it won't be the utopia you socialists thought it was going to be.

I'll still laugh. (It's the best medicine)

I never claimed it would be any kind of utopia. Only that it's the best way to insure the most people while getting the biggest bang out of our healthcare buck.

Personally, I don't need it. At least not at the moment.

I retired from a union job at age 48 with a full pension and healthcare benefits. I'm now 60 yrs old, I haven't paid a dime in premiums in over 12 yrs and I haven't had a deductible, other than small co-pays, in over 37 yrs.

Just two months ago, I had surgery and was hospitalized for a week at a cost of over $100,000. Other than a few $30 co-pays to my surgeon, it cost me nothing.

A month before that, I was hospitalized for three days after my lung collapsed during a biopsy procedure. Again, my cost was zero.

While my benefit fund does have a large beneficiary pool covering the entire east coast of the U.S. from New York City to Brownsville, TX., it's nothing when compared to the 300 million strong beneficiary pool we'd have as nation under a single-payer system.

When I was still employed, I served as a labor trustee on our multi-employer benefit plan's board of trustees for over 10 yrs. where we managed a little over $500 million in assets.

As such, we were a "FISA" regulated "self insured" multi-employer plan and the quality of insurance coverage I have today just goes to show what can be provided when the correct motives are employed in a not-for-profit environment.

With the bargaining power of a 300 million strong single-payer system, I would just imagine that some really big discounts could be negotiated.

This time, big pharma, for-profit hospitals and the medical profession in general would come crawling to us.

originally posted by: bender151
What do you think ACA is? It's basically just a gift to hospitals and insurance companies. You want government to step in, and they did. You're welcome.

The problems with our country are not rocket science. The lobbyists force the politicians to pass laws creating cartels and monopolies in exchange for campaign financing.

If this country ever get's its FDR balls back again, here's a quote from FDR:

"An old English judge once said: 'Necessitous men are not free men.' Liberty requires opportunity to make a living - a living decent according to the standard of the time, a living which gives man not only enough to live by, but something to live for.

For too many of us the political equality we once had won was meaningless in the face of economic inequality. A small group had concentrated into their own hands an almost complete control over other people's property, other people's money, other people's labor - other people's lives. For too many of us life was no longer free; liberty no longer real; men could no longer follow the pursuit of happiness.

Against economic tyranny such as this, the American citizen could appeal only to the organized power of government."

I get it. The Republican philosophy, "I got mine eff everyone else" is what MAGA is all about. How bad can taxes really be if every year the great canyon between the rich and the poor increases. Wealth inequality in this country is at all time highs. What more do you Republicans want? What is left? Oh, prison labor. Got it.

a reply to: Flatfish

I'm so glad people like you are on ATS to help keep it in balance with facts.

originally posted by: dfnj2015
a reply to: FauxMulder

If Sander's idea is so wrong, and Medicare would not be competitive, then make it available and the private insurers can just compete with it and beat it. I don't understand what is wrong with competition. Medicare should be able to compete with all the other providers.

I would be OK with that as long as you could opt out of paying any taxes towards medicare if you weren't going to use it. What do you say?

a reply to: dfnj2015

a free market would have never allowed for the cost to go beyond the economy's ability to bear, it would have been impossible! and that is what we've had for awhile... a healthcare system that costs beyond what our economy can bear.
in markets that aren't a necessity, where the gov't isn't working so hard to ensure the people have their needs met, if they raise the cost of the goods too much and too many people just can't afford them, they don't buy the goods, and the company is forced to lower the cost, even if they are force to come up with a different business plan to do it. the same could be said about the low wages, our gov't stepped in to help the needy, and well by doing so, they alleviated the businesses from the worry about having to keep their employees alive. so, no, mcdonalds never had to find a way to ensure their employees could live long enough to come back to work tomorrow, so they just scooped the money they would have used for that and placed into the pockets of their upper management team.

originally posted by: bender151

My premium $1500 per month with HUGE deductibles. How come your's is so cheap?

How on earth does yours cost that much? Are you going through ACA or something? I'm a single person and mine is about $100/mo, though that's employer provided. When I looked up what my premium would be under ObamaCare it was more like $1500/mo.

"HEALTH INSURANCE: PREMIUMS AND INCREASES
1/3/2017
The increased cost of health insurance is a central fact in any discussion of health policy and health delivery. Annual premiums reached $18,142 in 2016 for an average family."

That's about right. $1511 per month for a family of four in New Jersey.

originally posted by: dawnstar
a reply to: dfnj2015

a free market would have never allowed for the cost to go beyond the economy's ability to bear, it would have been impossible! and that is what we've had for awhile... a healthcare system that costs beyond what our economy can bear.
in markets that aren't a necessity, where the gov't isn't working so hard to ensure the people have their needs met, if they raise the cost of the goods too much and too many people just can't afford them, they don't buy the goods, and the company is forced to lower the cost, even if they are force to come up with a different business plan to do it. the same could be said about the low wages, our gov't stepped in to help the needy, and well by doing so, they alleviated the businesses from the worry about having to keep their employees alive. so, no, mcdonalds never had to find a way to ensure their employees could live long enough to come back to work tomorrow, so they just scooped the money they would have used for that and placed into the pockets of their upper management team.

Or, the CEO's and executives take so much out of the economy into their own pockets everyone else is eff up the arse.

originally posted by: FauxMulder

originally posted by: dfnj2015
a reply to: FauxMulder

If Sander's idea is so wrong, and Medicare would not be competitive, then make it available and the private insurers can just compete with it and beat it. I don't understand what is wrong with competition. Medicare should be able to compete with all the other providers.

I would be OK with that as long as you could opt out of paying any taxes towards medicare if you weren't going to use it. What do you say?

Yes, as long as you agree that I can opt of paying federal taxes for bombs used to kill brown people.

originally posted by: Martin75
a reply to: Flatfish

Even on the graph you provided, Medicare's administrative cost is less than half that of the private insurers.

I would think that their cost would be much less because they only reimburse about $0.20 on the dollar.

As someone else already stated in this thread, doctors and hospitals charge more when they find out the patient is insured.

I think they do this because they know the insurance carrier will expect discounts for their business, hence the "Preferred Provider" programs most of us belong to.

They're "preferred" by the insurance company because of the fact that they agreed to discount their fees. It's all part of the grand "circle jerk."

Just the same, the percentage of actual charges they pay out is not what makes up the "administrative" costs.

The administrative cost are the costs incurred to manage or run the company and to process & issue the checks that pay for the claims, not the claims themselves.

a reply to: dfnj2015

Just change "You can get Part A at age 65" to "You can get Part A at age 28". Problem solved.

^this^

The system is already in place. Just expand the 'qualifications' (or rather, do away with them!) to include everybody, all the time. It's so easy!!

originally posted by: dfnj2015

originally posted by: FauxMulder

originally posted by: dfnj2015
a reply to: FauxMulder

If Sander's idea is so wrong, and Medicare would not be competitive, then make it available and the private insurers can just compete with it and beat it. I don't understand what is wrong with competition. Medicare should be able to compete with all the other providers.

I would be OK with that as long as you could opt out of paying any taxes towards medicare if you weren't going to use it. What do you say?

Yes, as long as you agree that I can opt of paying federal taxes for bombs used to kill brown people.

No deal!

And here I though a lefty and a righty were about to come to some sort of agreement on a healthcare solution. Back to the drawing board!

a reply to: BuzzyWigs

Thanks, but in this day of "alternative facts," I sometimes wonder if it matters.

It's just that I find myself feeling guilty that I have such good insurance while others have none.

Especially when I know that as a nation, the system we currently have is not the very best it could be. And seeing how we're the richest nation on earth, I expect that we should have nothing less than the best.

The fact that we allow capitalistic, for-profit principles to dominate our healthcare insurance industry that keeps us from accomplishing that goal is inexcusable.

I'm confident we'll finally get to universal healthcare here in the good ole US of A. We're just gonna have to drag the naysayers along kicking & screaming all the way, until we get there.

Who knows, maybe someday they'll thank us for it.