4 ms·

How would nationalized healthcare get funded other than shifting that 200-500/check towards… nationalized healthcare?

Avicebron 3mo ago
When you cut out the insurance middlemen and pharmaceutical companies driving up record profits at the expense of care you can get pretty far with less in taxes
- daedrdev 3mo ago
  Insurance companies make like 2-4% hardly breaking the bank here. Pharmaceutical companies make a lot of money, but the US also funds most drug development which other countries freeload off of. US healthcare workers get a state enforced shortage to drive up their wages thanks to residency limits, but nobody ever wants to look at that. If you can't tell I am extremely pessimistic about the changes of universal healthcare improving on our current system. And to be clear it's universal, not unlimited.
  - Apocryphon 3mo ago
    Insurance companies basically are banks, in that while they make low profit margins they wield such vast amounts of capital, some of which they invest in, they might as well be financial service institutions. There's also other categories of entities (pharmacy benefit managers, wholesalers and distributors) that also get a cut. https://medium.com/@brian-curry-research/the-healthcare-maze-tracing-a-dollar-through-six-layers-of-middlemen-2abb718003a1 https://medium.com/@brian-curry-research/the-healthcare-maze...
- richwater 3mo ago
  You cut out the insurance middlemen but you introduce government bureaucracy. There's absolutely no way the government operates more efficiency in this space.
  - Apocryphon 3mo ago
    Better one bureaucracy than many. The U.S. health system requires constant patient management of multiple moving parties, it's maddening.
    - rayiner 3mo ago
      [flagged]
      - Apocryphon 3mo ago
        Do those school bureaucracies require parents of students to attend customer service calls that require multiple transfers over the better part of an hour?
  - shimman 3mo ago
    We know how efficient government operates tho, the admin expenses of say social security and medicare is less than 3%. Pray tell, what corporation operates with 3% admin expenses? Once again, what a crock of shit.
- rayiner 3mo ago
  The big 7 U.S. health insurers made $55 billion in profits in 2025. Pharma industry profits on U.S. revenue was about $100 billion. Total U.S. healthcare spending in 2025 was $5.7 trillion. Cutting insurer and pharma profits out of the equation entirely would reduce spending by 2.7%. I support universal health care. But most of its proponents are suffer from innumeracy and magical thinking. It’s very scary to me that we’d put these people in charge of health care reform.
  - deleted 3mo ago
    [deleted]

When you cut out the insurance middlemen and pharmaceutical companies driving up record profits at the expense of care you can get pretty far with less in taxes

daedrdev 3mo ago
Insurance companies make like 2-4% hardly breaking the bank here. Pharmaceutical companies make a lot of money, but the US also funds most drug development which other countries freeload off of. US healthcare workers get a state enforced shortage to drive up their wages thanks to residency limits, but nobody ever wants to look at that. If you can't tell I am extremely pessimistic about the changes of universal healthcare improving on our current system. And to be clear it's universal, not unlimited.
- Apocryphon 3mo ago
  Insurance companies basically are banks, in that while they make low profit margins they wield such vast amounts of capital, some of which they invest in, they might as well be financial service institutions. There's also other categories of entities (pharmacy benefit managers, wholesalers and distributors) that also get a cut. https://medium.com/@brian-curry-research/the-healthcare-maze-tracing-a-dollar-through-six-layers-of-middlemen-2abb718003a1 https://medium.com/@brian-curry-research/the-healthcare-maze...
richwater 3mo ago
You cut out the insurance middlemen but you introduce government bureaucracy. There's absolutely no way the government operates more efficiency in this space.
- Apocryphon 3mo ago
  Better one bureaucracy than many. The U.S. health system requires constant patient management of multiple moving parties, it's maddening.
  - rayiner 3mo ago
    [flagged]
    - Apocryphon 3mo ago
      Do those school bureaucracies require parents of students to attend customer service calls that require multiple transfers over the better part of an hour?
- shimman 3mo ago
  We know how efficient government operates tho, the admin expenses of say social security and medicare is less than 3%. Pray tell, what corporation operates with 3% admin expenses? Once again, what a crock of shit.
rayiner 3mo ago
The big 7 U.S. health insurers made $55 billion in profits in 2025. Pharma industry profits on U.S. revenue was about $100 billion. Total U.S. healthcare spending in 2025 was $5.7 trillion. Cutting insurer and pharma profits out of the equation entirely would reduce spending by 2.7%. I support universal health care. But most of its proponents are suffer from innumeracy and magical thinking. It’s very scary to me that we’d put these people in charge of health care reform.
- deleted 3mo ago
  [deleted]