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> You can forcefully restate your opinions all day long, but facts are facts. The first world countries that offer socialized medicine do strictly better than t

> You can forcefully restate your opinions all day long, but facts are facts. The first world countries that offer socialized medicine do strictly better than the US on basically every metric. Pick one. Access to treatment? Better. Infant mortality? Better. Mothers mortality? Better. Life expectancy? Better (the US used to be 1 year above average, it's now 2 years below, and falling). Bankruptcies due to medical bills? Better. They’re also cheaper. Your opinions do not line up with reality. Why doesn't medicare, the already socialized medicine of the US, have the same results as socialized medicine in other countries? > There's no medicare statistics trickery lol, all those government services being leveraged have to do almost nothing incrementally to support medical fees You could also use payroll taxes to pay private insurance, that's not a benefit of medicare, it's a benefit of the current tax implementation that is granted monopolistically to medicare. I know of at least one country that collects payroll taxes that go to private health companies. The question is: is medicare administration truly cheaper that private administration for the same service. > This is also failing to take into account the waste of employers managing employee healthcare -- why on earth are they doing that? Because the federal government makes it tax exempt to give healthcare through the employer, which is a 260 billion a year regressive tax benefit, denounced and criticized decades ago by prominent economists. You dont need to socialize medicine to stop that, you just need to stop handing out federal money. In fact, the tax-subsidy is higher than the combined profits of all insurance companies together. > The US doesn't have free market healthcare. Glad we agree on that one! > The young, healthy and cheap are forced into expensive market plans, privatizing the gains, while the old, sick and poor are handed off to the government to look after, socializing the losses. It's absurd. The poor also pay medicare taxes for the rich. The sick that don't make it to retirement ages pay medicare tax their entire life and die before receiving any benefit. Taxes always have this thing that they make things unfair for someone by law. Adverse selection and information asymmetry are real issues, but socialized medicine brings other issues like reduced coverage, rationing, etc. I am always surprised how the debate over healthcare ends up being arguing about capitalism as a method of efficient economic organization. It works for almost everything else, yet the arguments for socialized medicine are like arguing capitalism doesn't work. Its bonkers, and easy to refute because otherwise you would have to argue the same for food, for education, for transport, for everything, and none of those work better run by the government. > ...Doctors in Canada make hundreds of thousands of dollars per year To make doctors in the US root for socialized medicine, the state will have to offer greatly increased income. Thats how it happened historically in europe a century ago. Considering the AMA has killed socialized medicine laws multiple times in history, I would say the "screw the doctors" policy has a high chance of failure.

arcticbull 8y ago
>>> Why doesn't medicare, the already socialized medicine of the US, have the same results as socialized medicine in other countries? Again, we addressed this. It's literally all the old, sick and dying in a single pool allowing private insurers to be profitable. It's not comparable. It's like asking why a government-run fire insurance program that takes in only buildings that are already on fire is expensive. They only insure buildings already on fire against fire damage and they're not allowed to negotiate the price of water used to put the fires out. That's not how risk pooling works. It's not insurance, it's just a structured payouts program for the country's worst customers. >>> You could also use payroll taxes to pay private insurance, that's not a benefit of medicare, it's a benefit of the current tax implementation that is granted monopolistically to medicare. I know of at least one country that collects payroll taxes that go to private health companies. The question is: is medicare administration truly cheaper that private administration for the same service. Now the government is being leveraged to further enrich private industry instead of the people. The incremental cost is almost nothing. The only distortion of statistics here is that the private insurers don't have to deal with bad customers because they get socialized away (poor to Medicaid, old and sick to Medicare). I'm pretty sure you're thinking of Switzerland, which is the second-most expensive country in the OECD (they still manage to cover everyone, though). And yes, it's cheaper, every other country shows that. Even the "$32T" cost estimate of medicare for all is actually lower than what's being spent today over the same time period. >>> Because the federal government makes it tax exempt to give healthcare through the employer, which is a 260 billion a year regressive tax benefit, denounced and criticized decades ago by prominent economists. You dont need to socialize medicine to stop that, you just need to stop handing out federal money. In fact, the tax-subsidy is higher than the combined profits of all insurance companies together. Yes I agree, it's regressive and should be removed. Socializing cover is good for other reasons as stated above. >>> Glad we agree on that one! Definitely :) >>> The poor also pay medicare taxes for the rich. The sick that don't make it to retirement ages pay medicare tax their entire life and die before receiving any benefit. Taxes always have this thing that they make things unfair for someone by law. Yep, that's not ideal. It should be charged progressively like it is in other countries. >>> Adverse selection and information asymmetry are real issues, but socialized medicine brings other issues like reduced coverage, rationing, etc. It doesn't, though. Rationing is fine. There's either not enough to go around or you make the pool bigger, both are options. It's explicit, it's done fairly and it's done impartially. Rationing by making care too expensive is cold and unfair. I'm also unclear on why you think there's a finite pool of medical care. Either way your argument holds no water when every other program in the OECD is socialized, cheaper, and performs better on every metric. >>> To make doctors in the US root for socialized medicine, the state will have to offer greatly increased income. Thats how it happened historically in europe a century ago. Considering the AMA has killed socialized medicine laws multiple times in history, I would say the "screw the doctors" policy has a high chance of failure. Doctors in Canada hated the idea of socialized medicine in the 1970s too. You won't find a single one speaking out against it today. It was a huge fight. And yet, the entire country loves their system. Everyone in America hates theirs. There's something to this. Take a deep breath, it'll be okay. 60-75% of Americans are now interested in a public plan [2]. Tommy Douglas who championed socialized medicine in Canada was in 2004 named the greatest Canadian haha. [1] FWIW, a socialized option does not preclude private care. Single payer isn't the only way forward, many European countries offer two-tier care. Australia offers two-tier care. If you're so sure that private care is less expensive, better and more efficient, why not allow it to compete with a government run plan? I speculate that it's because it's just not. Sorry, man, you're on the wrong side of this one. The evidence shows it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Douglas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Douglas [2] https://www.kff.org/health-costs/poll-finding/kaiser-health-tracking-poll-march-2018-prescription-drug-pricing-medicare-for-all-proposals/ https://www.kff.org/health-costs/poll-finding/kaiser-health-...

arcticbull 8y ago

>>> Why doesn't medicare, the already socialized medicine of the US, have the same results as socialized medicine in other countries? Again, we addressed this. It's literally all the old, sick and dying in a single pool allowing private insurers to be profitable. It's not comparable. It's like asking why a government-run fire insurance program that takes in only buildings that are already on fire is expensive. They only insure buildings already on fire against fire damage and they're not allowed to negotiate the price of water used to put the fires out. That's not how risk pooling works. It's not insurance, it's just a structured payouts program for the country's worst customers. >>> You could also use payroll taxes to pay private insurance, that's not a benefit of medicare, it's a benefit of the current tax implementation that is granted monopolistically to medicare. I know of at least one country that collects payroll taxes that go to private health companies. The question is: is medicare administration truly cheaper that private administration for the same service. Now the government is being leveraged to further enrich private industry instead of the people. The incremental cost is almost nothing. The only distortion of statistics here is that the private insurers don't have to deal with bad customers because they get socialized away (poor to Medicaid, old and sick to Medicare). I'm pretty sure you're thinking of Switzerland, which is the second-most expensive country in the OECD (they still manage to cover everyone, though). And yes, it's cheaper, every other country shows that. Even the "$32T" cost estimate of medicare for all is actually lower than what's being spent today over the same time period. >>> Because the federal government makes it tax exempt to give healthcare through the employer, which is a 260 billion a year regressive tax benefit, denounced and criticized decades ago by prominent economists. You dont need to socialize medicine to stop that, you just need to stop handing out federal money. In fact, the tax-subsidy is higher than the combined profits of all insurance companies together. Yes I agree, it's regressive and should be removed. Socializing cover is good for other reasons as stated above. >>> Glad we agree on that one! Definitely :) >>> The poor also pay medicare taxes for the rich. The sick that don't make it to retirement ages pay medicare tax their entire life and die before receiving any benefit. Taxes always have this thing that they make things unfair for someone by law. Yep, that's not ideal. It should be charged progressively like it is in other countries. >>> Adverse selection and information asymmetry are real issues, but socialized medicine brings other issues like reduced coverage, rationing, etc. It doesn't, though. Rationing is fine. There's either not enough to go around or you make the pool bigger, both are options. It's explicit, it's done fairly and it's done impartially. Rationing by making care too expensive is cold and unfair. I'm also unclear on why you think there's a finite pool of medical care. Either way your argument holds no water when every other program in the OECD is socialized, cheaper, and performs better on every metric. >>> To make doctors in the US root for socialized medicine, the state will have to offer greatly increased income. Thats how it happened historically in europe a century ago. Considering the AMA has killed socialized medicine laws multiple times in history, I would say the "screw the doctors" policy has a high chance of failure. Doctors in Canada hated the idea of socialized medicine in the 1970s too. You won't find a single one speaking out against it today. It was a huge fight. And yet, the entire country loves their system. Everyone in America hates theirs. There's something to this. Take a deep breath, it'll be okay. 60-75% of Americans are now interested in a public plan [2]. Tommy Douglas who championed socialized medicine in Canada was in 2004 named the greatest Canadian haha. [1] FWIW, a socialized option does not preclude private care. Single payer isn't the only way forward, many European countries offer two-tier care. Australia offers two-tier care. If you're so sure that private care is less expensive, better and more efficient, why not allow it to compete with a government run plan? I speculate that it's because it's just not. Sorry, man, you're on the wrong side of this one. The evidence shows it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Douglas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Douglas [2] https://www.kff.org/health-costs/poll-finding/kaiser-health-tracking-poll-march-2018-prescription-drug-pricing-medicare-for-all-proposals/ https://www.kff.org/health-costs/poll-finding/kaiser-health-...