Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
Too many DUers don't know why the goal of single payer matters
This thread shows that most of the objections are based on reasons that demonstrate a failure to understand the economics of the medical industry's cartel pricing and the only way it can be dealt with.
Ex: http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=7298226
When Obama pushed health care reform, he allowed single payer to be taken off the table before the process even started.
Bernie is bringing it back as an issue. He believes in and will aim for the "Medicare for ALL" law that should have been out there in the first place.
What is Single Payer?
Single-payer national health insurance, also known as “Medicare for all,” is a system in which a single public or quasi-public agency organizes health care financing, but the delivery of care remains largely in private hands. Under a single-payer system, all residents of the U.S. would be covered for all medically necessary services, including doctor, hospital, preventive, long-term care, mental health, reproductive health care, dental, vision, prescription drug and medical supply costs.
The program would be funded by the savings obtained from replacing today’s inefficient, profit-oriented, multiple insurance payers with a single streamlined, nonprofit, public payer, and by modest new taxes based on ability to pay. Premiums would disappear; 95 percent of all households would save money. Patients would no longer face financial barriers to care such as co-pays and deductibles, and would regain free choice of doctor and hospital. Doctors would regain autonomy over patient care.
The Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act, H.R. 676, based on PNHP’s JAMA-published Physicians’ Proposal, would establish an American single-payer health insurance system.
The program would be funded by the savings obtained from replacing today’s inefficient, profit-oriented, multiple insurance payers with a single streamlined, nonprofit, public payer, and by modest new taxes based on ability to pay. Premiums would disappear; 95 percent of all households would save money. Patients would no longer face financial barriers to care such as co-pays and deductibles, and would regain free choice of doctor and hospital. Doctors would regain autonomy over patient care.
The Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act, H.R. 676, based on PNHP’s JAMA-published Physicians’ Proposal, would establish an American single-payer health insurance system.
http://www.pnhp.org/facts/what-is-single-payer
Why?
Because it will dramatically lower the costs of health care for everyone.
How?
It prevents the medical industries from gaming the system.
Single payer (mostly) turns the industry from what are called Price Makers to Price Takers.
What's a cartel?
In economics, a cartel is an agreement between competing firms to control prices or exclude entry of a new competitor in a market. It is a formal organization of sellers or buyers that agree to fix selling prices, purchase prices, or reduce production using a variety of tactics.
In this case the medical community has a variety of methods to charge much more profit than a "market' would provide them. They do it with things like cartel members (American Medical Associate or the American Dental Association) restricting the number of provider, or through regulations that their lobbyists have had passed which restrict competition (importing medicine).
Because the medical industry is a cartel, the insurance companies can't counter their price demands effectively. They can only work around the edges to affect pricing via those few willing and able to go against the cartels. Enabling insurance companies, as profit seeking entities, to form their own cartel to price fix on the consumer's behalf would be a legal bucket of worms that would ultimately screw the consumer even more.
That requires us to ask this question:
How does the purchaser who is designated to negotiate on your behalf prevent the cartel-member seller from charging exorbitant costs for their product?
That's where single payer "Medicare for ALL" comes in.
Forming our own cartel via our government sends nearly ALL the money being spent on health care through a single faucet. This breaks the back of the medical cartels with the results reflected in this chart. (The further to the left, the lower the cost per person and the higher on the chart the better overall health care outcomes.)
Everyone gets covered and we all spend less for our own needs.
49 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
But when we discuss single payer we get nice little paid sock puppets in the threads to repeat corporate talking points and muddy the issue.
[URL=
.html][IMG]
[/IMG][/URL]
