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I don't know why people think universal healthcare is the end all be all. There are also some really bad aspects to it, it isn't all amazing. It also isn't "free" in counties that have it, unless you're unemployed.
I do think the US healthcare system does need to the majority checked though. Probably regulated pricing and such.
About half the US would declare civil war because they are so fucking stupid?
If healthcare were decoupled from employment, Americans could protest in much larger number and for a longer period of time.
A general strike would become viable.
A better life for 99.999999% of the country.
The other 0.0000001% are already so wealthy that their life will be exactly the same except that they will be furious about the 99.999999% having an easier life.
my friend would get the blood pressure meds he needs instead of searching for magic pills at the health food store.
have they checked cost+ drugs for the medication, they got a lot of stuff now that is way cheaper than insurance
yeah but you have to see a doctor to get the script to get the meds…
Hope would exist again and every american could get back to pursuing happiness rather than lock in on survival mode only.
This is the case in literally every other country on earth.
Travel to fucking Canada or Mexico to answer this question. It's not hard.
People would have more job mobility. You could quit (or get fired) and not have to worry about becoming bankrupt due to healthcare.
People that don't have insurance will be able to seek aid. Less people will die of preventable illness. People can focus on getting better without the stress of "how will I pay for this? I'm ruined"
Things happening to you medically would stop defining your life. I called for a check on something, get a date in 2 days and be scheduled for a radiology, all 100% free.
In Canada it's more like 30 days or more, and you could expect a US single.payer system to be less efficient since it hasn't been refined for several decades
First and foremost this would be a HUGE boon for small businesses. They are currently hugely outclassed in offering benefits which hampers hiring. It's also significantly more costly per employee for them.
Second, huge boon for employees who can change jobs left and right regardless of life circumstances. Currently the best way to improve your wages and/or get promoted to a bigger position is to get a job at a new company.
Third, huge boon for entrepreneurs who can now take bigger risks to start a new business because regardless of what happens, they don't have to worry about losing their healthcare
All of these things will have long term knock-on effects of leveling the opportunities for non wealthy people as well.
I'll say it for the millionth time. Every single stance the GOP takes is bad for small businesses, bad for the economy, bad for the country.
Very well said. My old man can attest to the struggle of running a small-business with a couple employees while managing the overhead of health insurance both for himself, and them.
This is honestly how Democrats should be pushing it: We're Pro Small-Business. (1) Entrepreneurship, (2) Innovation, (3) True competition, (4) Keeping money within communities... I could go on.
I’ll say it for the millionth time. Every single stance the GOP takes is bad for small businesses, bad for the economy, bad for the country.
Bad for PEOPLE in general.
Except for rich people.
Global warming would probably be solved, because hell would also have frozen over.
"Big news tonight. Congress has officially passed the Healthcare for All Bill with unanimous support, also, the Cleveland Browns have won the Super Bowl!"
Curling the monkey paw a little bit...
A single payer system will likely try to look for some efficiencies since they can track everyone. One thing I expect will happen is that care will shift regarding the homeless population.
A small minority of homeless often rely on hospitals as a shelter of last resort in cases of severe weather. There are also cases where homeless only interface with the emergency care system since it is the only care they can get.
I can easily see a government run system pushing these people into "more cost effective" options, including the immediate movement from emergency rooms into "specialty facilities" for "long term care".
According to magats the gates of hell will open and demons will spew forth.
I'd probably go to the doctor.
I've got a bowel obstruction 2 years ago and i had to pay 6k for my deductible and my insurance paid 12k. I got a tube down my nose, some xrays and stayed a night. I currently know its going to happen again any day now and it almost happend two nights ago and I was in horrendous pain. I could go to the doctor and they could probably help me and stop it from happening again. However, I dont have 6k to spare to find out. So until it is debilitating, we'll just have to see what happens.
That sucks.
Ive got shitty US insurance. Had to have the ol' gallbladder removed. Hospital charged $40k. After insurance, my bill was less than $3k. Lots of people would be financially ruined by that math. Im thankful I had the $3k to pay.
It's hard out there, but at least we're letting gun owners carry into Hawaiian grocery stores.
Ive got shitty US insurance.
Which is actually the best kind of insurance for bowel obstructions.
More entrepreneurship. Plenty more people would work for themselves or start businesses if they didn't have to worry about healthcare.
This. I've said for years, it'd be a Renaissance of entrepreneurship and craftsmanship.
I've known so many people over the years that would have been fine getting by selling things they've made, or fixing others things, if they didn't need employer based Healthcare.
I would like to point out that the two need not be connected. We could unmarry healthcare and jobs by making it a law that you could cash out your healthcare coverage. This would open the market for more competitive nealthcare administrators as the people using the insurance would be the ones choosing. I think it would also increase the popularity of paying direct for the simpler stuff and only carrying insurance for the big stuff. This I think is an important step as it would realign what medical care actually costs when you take out all the middlemen taking their cut. And then, when you do move to universal healthcare, the prices would be more accurate. Otherwise we are going to end up with nationalize anthem or united healthcare for determining what medical care you get, which will be a nightmare.
Can you not? My ex has always opted out of health insurance because mine was much better. Now that she needs her own, she had to choose between getting it through her employer and getting it through the ACA marketplace
So my point was if they just go straight to universal, it will end up underpaying doctors, which will lead to further shortages of doctors. So by doing it in two steps, we can hopefull preserve the doctors we have, and maybe even make it a progession people want to be in again.
But why is your ex getting insurance through her employer now bad. Neither path is going to change the current system before that happens.
Approximately 1-2 million people employed in the mass bureacracy of claims processing and validation would lose their jobs.
That's how much of a gargantuan amount of bullshit the healthcare industry is, its so big that at this point, assuming the rest of the economy was doing fine, switching to universal health care would create a moderate recession, because so many bullshit jobs would no longer need to exist.
Obviously it would be a massive net economic benefit, but at this point, medicine is gonna sting a bit.
Approximately 1-2 million people employed in the mass bureacracy of claims processing and validation would lose their jobs.
Those "same" (number of) people would be needed to process the claims that needed to be approved by the nationwide system that replaced "for profit" healthcare.
That's not quite true. Medical billing here is hopelessly complicated, a universal system would likely have universal rules, and streamline the process of billing and payments.
So if a medical practice now needs 5 people to do the insurance billing, it might need only one if there was one payer (Medicare) or two if there was a German sort of system, but not 5.
No. Wrong.
As others have outlined in greater detail... no, you'd have a massive simplification and standardization of such forms, thus a massive reduction in the amount of 'needed' work of such kind.
The entire way the modern US healthcare system works is by making there be so many abstract layers and processes going on at the same time, that it requires an inordinate amount of time and effort to even actually map out what those layers and processes are, much less who is actually responsible for what particular decision or mistake.
And that is the point of it. Its is insanely complex and opaque by design, because it allows them do functionally do whatever they want, and be able to say its all done for compliance's sake.
So, yeah, if you just flatten all that... ~90% of it no longer needs to exist.
Or... the real funny part here is... if we stick with the system as it is, well, this kind of shit is gonna be done by LLMs. So we will probably end up having the same employment void developing under the current hypercapitalist paradigm as well.
I'm from Canada, and I know a surgeon and he has one admin. One (1) secretary that handles patient booking, billing, and payments. The benefit of a single payer system is there's one payer. The government. One set of forms to comply with. No rejections (almost always. Rejections come from foreigners or out of province coverage when determining which province is responsible for paying)
His software system (government provided) auto fills 99% of it. That's why he can have one (1) secretary. The government side Idk but it's certainly not insane ratios like the US since the process is far more streamlined and doesn't rely on appeals or rejections to racketeer more money out of doctors and patients. What's really sad is Americans are so conditioned to believe their way of life is somehow normal, that orphans must also be crushed somehow in Europe or Canada.
Yeah, you go into a doctor's office and they'll have 5 secretaries to handle all that paper work. I didnt do Healthcare, but for a minute I was a service administrator for a car dealership who's job, among 7 of us, was to do the billing and warranty/insurance claims. The paperwork was insane and had to be presented in a precise way or it wasn't accepted. I can only imagine what hoops health insurance makes these offices jump through.
While I entirely agree with all the benefits posted under here, we’d also be subject to the tyranny of regressives. That face eating leopard would feast on those red state seniors focussed on cutting health insurance to “those” people.
Take education as an analogy. That’s mostly run by individual states, and there is a huge range of outcomes. Massachusetts is typically rated as or near the best education system but we pay for it. We recognize it as something valuable and as a good investment. Meanwhile many states/locales seem to see education as only a cost to be minimized. This is one of the reasons I live where I do. But if it were national, we’d lose that choice. One downside of universal healthcare would be that we’d no longer have the choice of investing in something better
I work in tech and have better health insurance than most. I want the same for everyone, not less for everyone, even when that comes with voting for higher taxes
Universal healthcare doesn't mean you can't pay for private healthcare. The UK has both. Jobs can often come with health insurance. It's typically much cheaper as well because it doesn't cover emergency services.
everyone would be in better shape health-wise.
but also billionaires would lose money, which is why it'll never happen as things are now
US would start catching up to the technologically advanced nations in life expectency. A lot more people would start businesses or take a chance on dream jobs. The us would become more competitive with other countries as businesses would no longer have it as a cost. Its essentially like subsidizing your whole economy and many of our competitors do just that so we have to compete with that.
The economy would skyrocket. Everyone, and I do mean EVERYONE would benefit. And there are people in this country so vile they would lose out on billions or trillions in profits just to screw over the masses. Imagine companies not having to pay 10-20k+ per employee for healthcare. Employees getting preventative care, being healthy, and being more .. PRODUCTIVE!
The health insurance industry is half a percent of the whole US economy ($1.6tn of $32tn). Pulling out the rug under it would almost certainly cause a recession in the short term. Probably still worth it imo