‘Medicare for All’ would cover everyone, save billions in first year: new study

[hortysir]

‘Medicare for All’ would cover everyone, save billions in first year: new study

Economist says Canadian-style, single-payer health plan would reap huge savings from reduced paperwork and from negotiated drug prices, enough to pay for quality coverage for all – at less cost to families and businesses



Upgrading the nation’s Medicare program and expanding it to cover people of all ages would yield more than a half-trillion dollars in efficiency savings in its first year of operation, enough to pay for high-quality, comprehensive health benefits for all residents of the United States at a lower cost to most individuals, families and businesses.


That’s the chief finding of a new fiscal study by Gerald Friedman, a professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. There would even be money left over to help pay down the national debt, he said.


Friedman says his analysis shows that a nonprofit single-payer system based on the principles of the Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act, H.R. 676, introduced by Rep. John Conyers Jr., D-Mich., and co-sponsored by 45 other lawmakers, would save an estimated $592 billion in 2014. That would be more than enough to cover all 44 million people the government estimates will be uninsured in that year and to upgrade benefits for everyone else.


“No other plan can achieve this magnitude of savings on health care,” Friedman said.


His findings were released this morning [Wednesday, July 31, 11 a.m. EDT] at a congressional briefing in the Cannon House Office Building hosted by Public Citizen and Physicians for a National Health Program, followed by a 1 p.m. news conference with Rep. Conyers and others in observance of Medicare’s 48th anniversary at the House Triangle near the Capitol steps. A copy of Friedman’s full report, with tables and charts, is available here.


Friedman said the savings would come from slashing the administrative waste associated with today’s private health insurance industry ($476 billion) and using the new, public system’s bargaining muscle to negotiate pharmaceutical drug prices down to European levels ($116 billion).


“These savings would be more than enough to fund $343 billion in improvements to our health system, including the achievement of truly universal coverage, improved benefits, and the elimination of premiums, co-payments and deductibles, which are major barriers to people seeking care,” he said.




*snip*

using the new, public system’s bargaining muscle to negotiate pharmaceutical drug prices down to European levels ($116 billion)

Use my tax dollars to mirror Europe?

 

[Quantum Windbag]

‘Medicare for All’ would cover everyone, save billions in first year: new study

This is what I and my Progressive friends wanted but Obama is a moderate so he didn't insist upon it.

Every time you post you get dumber.

Obama didn't insist on single payer because he is a useless pile of meat that can't get anything he wants, so he always pretends that what he gets is what he wanted. The reason you didn't get single payer is that everyone in the universe understands why it is a bad idea.

 

[Billo_Really]

Every time you post you get dumber.

Obama didn't insist on single payer because he is a useless pile of meat that can't get anything he wants, so he always pretends that what he gets is what he wanted. The reason you didn't get single payer is that everyone in the universe understands why it is a bad idea.

It's only a bad idea to the for-profit healthcare industry.

It's a good idea to average American's.

 

[auditor0007]

Medicare doesn't provide care. I don't know what Medicare does. It takes $100.00 a month to give me a service that I used to pay $30.00 a month for.

Medicare is like insurance. You have a deductibles and co-insurance. Medicare is there for when you really get sick and the bills get really big.

 

[auditor0007]

‘Medicare for All’ would cover everyone, save billions in first year: new study

This is what I and my Progressive friends wanted but Obama is a moderate so he didn't insist upon it.

Every time you post you get dumber.

Obama didn't insist on single payer because he is a useless pile of meat that can't get anything he wants, so he always pretends that what he gets is what he wanted. The reason you didn't get single payer is that everyone in the universe understands why it is a bad idea.

Single payer with an option to purchase private supplemental insurance is a great idea. Eventually, this is what we will have.

 

[S.J.]

[qu
Millions will LOSE their existing coverage because of the cost of Obamacare. If you're rich, or you're an elected official who can make the taxpayer pay for your insurance, then I guess you can afford to keep what you have. If your employer currently provides it, and can't afford the additional cost, then you're likely to become an uninsured part-time employee instead of full-time.

Yeah, well, employers are going to find that won't fly for more than a few months when employees start bailing for jobs that DO offer health care.

There won't be any jobs that offer health care.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Every time you post you get dumber.

Obama didn't insist on single payer because he is a useless pile of meat that can't get anything he wants, so he always pretends that what he gets is what he wanted. The reason you didn't get single payer is that everyone in the universe understands why it is a bad idea.

It's only a bad idea to the for-profit healthcare industry.

It's a good idea to average American's.

Tell that to the Brits, even the poor people there go to France.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

This is what I and my Progressive friends wanted but Obama is a moderate so he didn't insist upon it.

Every time you post you get dumber.

Obama didn't insist on single payer because he is a useless pile of meat that can't get anything he wants, so he always pretends that what he gets is what he wanted. The reason you didn't get single payer is that everyone in the universe understands why it is a bad idea.

Single payer with an option to purchase private supplemental insurance is a great idea. Eventually, this is what we will have.

A better idea would be to stop the ridiculous way the government pays doctors for health care.

 

[JoeB131]

[

Nope, they exempted themselves because they are better than you are. The simple proof of that is that, even if you already have health care, and don't work for the government, you are still subject to Obamacare.

Guy, you'll still be able to get your medications under Obamacare, don't worry.

The government already does a fine job of providing health care to their employees. They aren't the problem.

It's the employer who has shitty insurance or no insurance sponging off the rest of us.

You have nothing, so you insult.

No, I just don't waste time on crazy people who insist something is so when it isn't.

My Medical plan is EXACTLY the same as it was before ObamaCare. Oh, the company tried to scare us "omg, ObamaCare is coming, omg, omg, omg!!!!" And you know what, we have the same plan we had before, no real signifigant changes.

 

[JoeB131]

[qu
Millions will LOSE their existing coverage because of the cost of Obamacare. If you're rich, or you're an elected official who can make the taxpayer pay for your insurance, then I guess you can afford to keep what you have. If your employer currently provides it, and can't afford the additional cost, then you're likely to become an uninsured part-time employee instead of full-time.

Yeah, well, employers are going to find that won't fly for more than a few months when employees start bailing for jobs that DO offer health care.

There won't be any jobs that offer health care.

You keep telling yourself that.

Frankly, the sooner we get employers out of the health care business and go to single payer, the better, as far as I'm concerned.

But employers know that as long as they can hold your family's well-being over your head, they can get a little more out of you. So even though they HATE providing insurance, they don't want a world where you get it from the government.

 

[Billo_Really]

Tell that to the Brits, even the poor people there go to France.

Well they sure ain't gonna come here where they would pay 10 times as much for 1/2 the service and treatment.

 

[Stephanie]

The right is all too anxious to believe the propaganda coming from the private insurance industry, telling of the horrors of single payer, or Medicare for all. The right wants to privatize everything.

bs, believing propaganda is your liberals baby...I judged my opinion of it on reading about Englands socialist health care...some HORRIBLE STUFF...but you and people like don't care as long as other people will coving your health care, even forcing the YOUTH to cover you all's ass...so much for that FREEDOM OF CHOICE we hear you screeching on abortion, you sit here not a blink and AGREE WITH FORCING Obamacare on the American people and another FREEDOM taken away
pathetic

but by golly don't suggest a women has a ultrasound before her abortion...that is enough for you libs to melt completely down

 

[lynn63]

The entire system of healthcare needs to be restructured if the citizens have a chance in hell of ever seeing healthcare cost go down. The system is corrupt and monopolized in many states that have one or two dominate hospital systems and one or two dominate health insurance carriers that insure most of their population. In this situation, competition is stifled and these two entities can do what they want.

BC/BS also known as Wellpoint, Anthem insures most of the population in Alabama, Alaska, Delaware, Hawaii, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Wyoming. BC/BS also dominates in the Federal Employee Health plan as it covers 2/3 of its 8 million population.

United Healthcare is another dominate player in the market as it insures over 80 million people with the majority of them contracted for states Medicaid and Medicare population.

Neither BC/BS or United Healthcare or hospital monopolies want cost to decrease. Any decrease in the new exchanges will most likely be temporary until they get as many people signed up for it.

As much as I would like to see a single payer system, the government cannot be trusted to run it free of corruption without stepping on the corporations that they depend on for funding contributions.

 

[Luddly Neddite]

Tell that to the Brits, even the poor people there go to France.

Well they sure ain't gonna come here where they would pay 10 times as much for 1/2 the service and treatment.

Actually, there are some areas in which we have better medicine. You just gotta be rich to avail yourself of it.

But, its thanks to reagan's socialist EMTALA that hospitals can't afford to keep trauma and burn centers open.

Slacker rw's are just going to have to start paying their way.

 

[Wry Catcher]

‘Medicare for All’ would cover everyone, save billions in first year: new study

Someday, sooner, we can all hope, rather than later, America will find the sanity and courage to implement a single payer system.

Yes, that would be the sane course, if we ignore the reality that every single country that has a single payer system is moving away form it because of the ballooning costs and substandard care.

Please post a link showing which countries with single payer systems are moving away to another system and what system will they adopt.

 

[S.J.]

My Medical plan is EXACTLY the same as it was before ObamaCare. Oh, the company tried to scare us "omg, ObamaCare is coming, omg, omg, omg!!!!" And you know what, we have the same plan we had before, no real signifigant changes.

That's because it's been put on hold until after the mid-term elections, THEN you get screwed.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Guy, you'll still be able to get your medications under Obamacare, don't worry.

The government already does a fine job of providing health care to their employees. They aren't the problem.

It's the employer who has shitty insurance or no insurance sponging off the rest of us.

You have nothing, so you insult.

No, I just don't waste time on crazy people who insist something is so when it isn't.

My Medical plan is EXACTLY the same as it was before ObamaCare. Oh, the company tried to scare us "omg, ObamaCare is coming, omg, omg, omg!!!!" And you know what, we have the same plan we had before, no real signifigant changes.

I insist something is true that isn't?

By saying "No real significant changes," you are both expressing an opinion that other people might find ridiculous, and admitting that your plan changed, thus proving yourself a liar without any effort on my part.

 

[Flopper]

‘Medicare for All’ would cover everyone, save billions in first year: new study

Economist says Canadian-style, single-payer health plan would reap huge savings from reduced paperwork and from negotiated drug prices, enough to pay for quality coverage for all – at less cost to families and businesses



Upgrading the nation’s Medicare program and expanding it to cover people of all ages would yield more than a half-trillion dollars in efficiency savings in its first year of operation, enough to pay for high-quality, comprehensive health benefits for all residents of the United States at a lower cost to most individuals, families and businesses.


That’s the chief finding of a new fiscal study by Gerald Friedman, a professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. There would even be money left over to help pay down the national debt, he said.


Friedman says his analysis shows that a nonprofit single-payer system based on the principles of the Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act, H.R. 676, introduced by Rep. John Conyers Jr., D-Mich., and co-sponsored by 45 other lawmakers, would save an estimated $592 billion in 2014. That would be more than enough to cover all 44 million people the government estimates will be uninsured in that year and to upgrade benefits for everyone else.


“No other plan can achieve this magnitude of savings on health care,” Friedman said.


His findings were released this morning [Wednesday, July 31, 11 a.m. EDT] at a congressional briefing in the Cannon House Office Building hosted by Public Citizen and Physicians for a National Health Program, followed by a 1 p.m. news conference with Rep. Conyers and others in observance of Medicare’s 48th anniversary at the House Triangle near the Capitol steps. A copy of Friedman’s full report, with tables and charts, is available here.


Friedman said the savings would come from slashing the administrative waste associated with today’s private health insurance industry ($476 billion) and using the new, public system’s bargaining muscle to negotiate pharmaceutical drug prices down to European levels ($116 billion).


“These savings would be more than enough to fund $343 billion in improvements to our health system, including the achievement of truly universal coverage, improved benefits, and the elimination of premiums, co-payments and deductibles, which are major barriers to people seeking care,” he said.




*snip*

I have no doubt that a single payer system would save money. However, it's not in the cards, at least not in the foreseeable future. The Democrats aren't about to replace the healthcare law and Republicans want to repeal it and turn the clock back to 2008.

The passage of the healthcare law has made the insurance companies and even larger part of our healthcare system. Since the passage of a single payer system would destroy private health insurance, the insurance companies would fight single payer all the way.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Someday, sooner, we can all hope, rather than later, America will find the sanity and courage to implement a single payer system.

Yes, that would be the sane course, if we ignore the reality that every single country that has a single payer system is moving away form it because of the ballooning costs and substandard care.

Please post a link showing which countries with single payer systems are moving away to another system and what system will they adopt.

Already have, more than once, and you ignored it. Is there some reason I should expect this time to be any different?

 

[boedicca]

Given all the waivers granted to folks who want to avoid ObamaCare (including Congress), it's highly unlikely we could ever achieve Medicare for All.

The outcome will be a two tiered system of special health care for the political elite and their cronies, with chronic shortages and rationing for those of us who pay for the entire system.

No thank you; I'll pass.