Single payer does not eliminate private health insurance

To be sure, more than a few insurance company victims would like that, and also to see tumbrils deployed immediately thereafter. But all countries with single payer, and even those with socialzed medicine, have private insurance.

In all other developed countries, though, private health insurance is strictly an add-on. It supplements government insurance; it does not compete directly. And it is NOT allowed to deny basic health care to anybody, to cherry-pick, to have preferred provider lists, or to rescind policies.

What single payer will do is to force them to give up the Enron business model (in which their profits come from denying care and cherry-picking the healthy) and to adopt that of private life insurance.

Unlike health insurance, life insurance is highly competitive and co-exists well with Social Security survivors' benefits. The crucial fact here is that everyone who works must pay FICA, even if they look at SS survivors' benefits and decide they want more income for their kids than that. Neither the life insurance companies nor those who buy their products take anything away from the pool of money that provides for widow(er)s and orphans who can't afford those products.

Naturally the health insurance industry is going to hate that every bit as much as outright abolishement, given that life insurance profit margins are much more like those of supermarkets than the ripoff excesses that they have traditionally gained from murder by spreadsheet.

The point of making this argument is to reassure those who think they have (and may actually have) a plan that provides more than a single payer comprehensive plan that they are free to add on (or ask their employers to add on) any bells and whistles that they want to add. Doing the math--

Comprehensive single payer benefit
+ add ons out of pocket or from private insurance
= Way, way more for way, way less than anyone is paying right now

Just from my own experience, my COBRA is $450/month, but the Washington Health Security Trust (a state level single payer proposal) can get me more than I'm getting now in coverage for $75-$100 (down to $0 for low income families) a month. (Also there would be a business payroll tax of 10% of payroll, sliding scale down to 1%.) $350/mo is far more than I'd probably spend on extras. More affluent people would thus be getting far more than they are getting now, without draining the pool of health care dollars providing for those who can't afford the bells and whistles.

A “public option” could be anything. It could be run like a single payer program, allowing any individual or employer to enroll and having similar cost controls. But even under the best conditions, it saves only 9% compared to single payer.

Or it might be designed as a dumping ground for poor and sick people, allowing insurance companies to make even more profit diverting money from healthy people to their own bottom lines and away from paying for actual care. This is totally unacceptable.

I understand better now.

Have a good day, eridani. :hi:

:headbang:

There's a media black out on what other developed countries do about health care.
They have medicare for all, no payments.

You can purchase private ins if you want, but everyone has care period.
They don't have monthly premiums.

In large enough numbers, it would seem we could have success in pressuring the media to appropriately cover this issue.

could be another money pit with no real reform depending on whose version gets passed. I'm truly worried about it. It's too bad the insurance companies don't look at the positive. By allowing a government run system like single payer to take care of basic health care for everyone, they have eliminated the liability and can concentrate on selling extra bells and whistles insurance to those who can afford it and it seems there would be very little liability in it for them and clearer proft. It seems to me to be a win, win situation for them. Why are they too stupid to see it? Is it greed that they have to have all of the available health care dollars, instead of some?

That's a real possibility. I can live with a public option open to anyone that saves 9%.

I could care less if Bill Gates has an expensive fire alarm and sprinkler system that I can't afford. All I care about is that we get the same fire engine in the event of fire.

Although, in health care, that alarm system brings with it early detection, which brings better outcomes.

But, we useless eaters don't deserve any of that.

Terms like "single payer" and "public option" receive numb, blinking stares. No one knows what they mean, what the difference is between them or why they should care. However, "socialism" brings to mind a moody soundtrack and a host of stereotypical movie bad guys that anyone can conjure in a nanosecond. Moreover, we now have to deal with the anti-choice fundies throwing around phrases like "taxpayer funded abortions".

There MUST be a way to get in front of this...right now. We won't get another whack at this. No "next times" or "do overs".

It's a new way of framing it, but the other side will figure out a way to propagandize the evil of it. Best we stick to the terms we have settled on and then not only defend them but also propagandize them ourselves. We need our own propaganda machine.

Dictionary definition of Universal: including or covering all or a whole, collectively or distributively without limit or exception. Now, what better way to describe it? If every scaremonger would use that term, and every dufus who can read would pick up a dictionary, we'd have Universal health care in America inside of a month! One definition of "social" is: the welfare of human beings as members of society, or to be interested or concerned with ones fellow beings in society. Now, ain't that kinda Christian like? I think by getting the churches in our communities on board, that might help. After all, the father of Canadian Universal Health Care was a baptist minister from Saskachewan Canada, whose name was T.C. Douglas. Check him out, interesting story. The doctors of the day went on strike when faced with "socialism" and it resulted in the deaths of many people because the doctors refused treatment of the sick and dying, children included. It was only the threat of public lynchings and much public outcry that they relented, and were shamed into accepting what is now one of the best and cheapest systems in the world.

T.C. Douglas was confronted with the "Red Scare" when he introduced Universal Health Care in Canada, but he insisted on using the "Universal" approach, and he did one thing different. He forced it through because he knew it was a good thing, and that health care was a right, not a consumer commodity. Obama knows that, I hope, and if he doesn't force it through and fast, it will never happen. Have faith though, brother, the current system is pricing itself out of existence for sure. And what is the difference between taxpayer funded abortions and abortions for profit by big insurance companies? Throw that one back in their faces. At least there would be some level of control, or alternate solutions in a government run system, like education, adoption, and birth control. A study was done, I forget where, but I read about it in some magazine, with inner city teens where one group got sex ed, and another didn't. The one with sex ed had 75% less teen pregnancies, and of those in the educated group, those of African American decent had far less pregnancies compared with groups of white and other decent who took the same education. The problem with the right, is that they scream about it, yet offer no solution other than outright banning everything. Hell, they;'d ban sex altogether, if they could get away with it, ban human instinct? Yeah, right, well, we've seen that doesn't work, especially when you get tangled up with some Argentinian hottie, right Sanford?

I have a freind who is a GP. He says our local rural hospital loses money on every medicare person they admit. The Government set's hospital reinbursement rates, and rural hospitals can't function at that rate. Our local hospital shifts their medicare loses to those with private insurance.
He says "private insurance companies negotiate their rates, medicare & medicaid simply tells hospitals what they will pay."
There are doctor's now who won't take medicare or medicaid clients. Will hospitals stop taking "public option" clients?
Will the government force both doctors and hospitals to take "public option" clients?

They drain off and piss away a lot of money that could be used for care. If the government has no access to that money, their payments to providers are lower than they would be otherwise. Also the hospital has to waste a lot of money on private insurance bullshit. Making that go away would reduce their costs.

With true single payer you can eliminate the drain. Also, providers would get what they do not have now--a role in negotiating reimbursement rates.

Canada's cost of health care in GDP is about 8 or 10% compared with 18-22% in the USA Why? 1. A needed Profit 2. Administrative costs, 3. Overlapping of billing procedures 4. The strange way that when you go for treatment, everybody gets in on the action and charges for anything and everything 5. Doctors and hospitals LOVE to wrack up the bill when they see you have insurance! i recently went for a check up, and wound up getting a chest x-ray, a cat scan, an MRI, and a Cat Scan-MRI combo and they still didn't come to a conclusion except that I smoked and had some nodules that went away when I smoking quit and started taking allergy medicine!

Of course a GP is going to worry about that stuff! Listen, the way it is now, with a for-profit system, of course they stand to loose money, simply because profit is the bottom line. In a system like Canada's, there is none of that. Quite simply, everyone pays the same, whether it is through taxes or premiums, and in some provinces, no premiums are paid. So, with the whole population paying into it there is a lot of revenue in the system sitting there in a pool. Now, here is the beauty of it, NOT EVERYBODY GETS SICK AT THE SAME TIME! Get it? There is no competition between an efficient, low cost system that only needs, say $100 to operate, compared to a system that needs $1000 to operate, because they have shareholders and leeches standing in between demanding a profit. The money comes in to health care, and is paid out ONLY to the cost of the cost care of what is needed. Private insurance negotiates their rates because they have to add in a profit margin, and by his own admission, he states that private medicine cannot compete with a universal, one payer system! The hospitals don't "loose" money, they just don't make as big a profit from medicare, because medicare is not profit based. Whenever business's say they "loose" money on something, that is code for, "there is no profit in it"

why not let them go into bankruptcy, and if they can't manage better under reorganization, let them become state or federal govt.-run.

As a former health care giver, I am shocked and saddened to see what has become of health care in America. $ 1. 4 million is being spent per day in DC by the health care lobbyists so your elected representative is getting taken care of and has quality health care we pay for and can't afford ourselves for our families, I know what is deemed, defended and supported in Tennessee and Virginia as quality health care and clearly profit care comes ahead of patient care. http://www.wisecountyissues.com/?p=62 MRSA ( methicillin resistant staphylococcus aureas ) is infesting our communities because filthy, uncaring hospitals and emergency rooms are breeding them and spreading them into our schools, homes, restaurants. How many more Americans' will be diseased or die while 74 % of Americans' are begging for health care reform ? More people died in America last year from MRSA complications than AIDS. When MRSA and a flu bug start mixing, it won't be pretty and we are being infected by the very health care system we depend on and trust to keep us safe and healthy.