Health Care and Insurance Industries Mobilize to Kill ‘Medicare for All’

Discussion in 'Politics' started by douwd20, Feb 24, 2019.

  1. douwd20 Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    207
    Now all of a sudden everyone loves ObamaCare (ACA) now that they couldn't kill it and it's successor is waiting backstage. Big pharma and the big health insurance companies see an existential threat that must be squashed and NOW.

    WASHINGTON — Even before Democrats finish drafting bills to create a single-payer health care system, the health care and insurance industries have assembled a small army of lobbyists to kill “Medicare for all,” an idea that is mocked publicly but is being greeted privately with increasing seriousness.

    Doctors, hospitals, drug companies and insurers are intent on strangling Medicare for all before it advances from an aspirational slogan to a legislative agenda item. They have hired a top lieutenant in Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign to spearhead the effort. And their tactics will show Democrats what they are up against as the party drifts to the left on health care.

    They also demonstrate how entrenched the Democrats’ last big health care victory, the Affordable Care Act, has become in the nation’s health care system.

    The lobbyists’ message is simple: The Affordable Care Act is working reasonably well and should be improved, not repealed by Republicans or replaced by Democrats with a big new public program. More than 155 million Americans have employer-sponsored health coverage. They like it, by and large, and should be allowed to keep it.

    Health Care and Insurance Industries Mobilize to Kill ‘Medicare for All’

    “Insurance companies are fighting it because they are afraid of the prospect of a potent new competitor that will cut into their profits,” Mr. Higgins said. “Medicare has lower administrative costs and lower executive salaries and could use its bargaining power to get better deals from hospitals and other health care providers.”






     
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  3. RainbowSingularity Valued Senior Member

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    7,447
    real story
    what is the global macro-economic reality ... ?

    india & china holding the majority of the worlds growing wealth "new" consumers...
    they have the ability to take over cheap pills/drugs by making their own.

    when business models are built on the failed boom n bust model they are unable to be sustainable long term.

    this reality is "the market providing"

    india & china will demand cheaper low cost drugs and the new money sales of life time consumers will always shift to a lower price just as busines always seeks to make more money and cut costs.
     
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  5. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    20,069
    What is with this duplicitous claim that millions of people will lose their private health care insurance, without stipulating that they will gain public health care insurance at half the cost of their current private insurance.

    You wont lose anything at all, you'll gain health care that is just as good if not better than it is now.
    Health care is not a negotiable commodity, that concept is macabre. You pay me what I want if you want to stay alive is what you get with private insurance. That is existential blackmail.

    Under a non-profit single payer system everyone receives the same care for the same procedure, poor and rich alike and it will relieve all businesses from the burden and cost of maintaining heslthcare for their employees, which will translate in a raise for the employee and a lower cost to the employer.

    I tried to find a thread that addresses this issue clearly without scaring people with the fictitious threat of losing their health care without having a better system to replace what they have now.

    The fact is that everyone will be covered by the same health care at a reasonable percentage of ability to pay (tax), which will subsidise coverage for the poor, provide affordable coverage for the middle class, and only demand a slightly higher premium from the very rich, which make up the smallest group with the most money and ability to pay.

    Does no one ask how the Europeans do it? In the developed world, the richest country (the US) pays the highest premiums for the worst health care . How can that be? The current for-profit health care system makes a profit on your illness, as if health is a negotiable commodity.
    Doesn't everyone understand that?
     
    Last edited: Feb 26, 2020
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  7. Jeeves Valued Senior Member

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    5,089
    Almo
    Almost nobody understands that.
    And, the way the US political system is set up right now, nobody could make it work properly. It's not an accident - and not even entirely down to intensive negative propaganda and intimidation from the Republicans - that Obama couldn't pass anything but a watered-down, overcomplicated, incomplete version of his bill, or that Bill Clinton couldn't pass any version of his.
    Americans are programmed to not understand such comprehensive social ideas.
     
  8. Write4U Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    20,069
    An example is the guy who exclaimed: "Don't replace my Medicare with some socialist healthcare scheme"

    Medicare already has a functional system in place and could easily be expanded to include all ages. Any objections are from ignorance or duplicity. This would certainly result in an easier and cheaper to manage system for ALL parties involved in health care from patients to doctors, from employees to employers, from medical manufacturers to suppliers.

    Any areas of apparent difficulty can be resolved by studying the European systems and selecting the most compatible form to integrate in our current Medicare system. The answers are already out there. All we need is to resist the influence of the for-profit merchants of healthcare, who currently make billions of dollars in profits on sick people. That's shameful.
     
    Last edited: Feb 27, 2020
  9. sculptor Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    8,466
    "first, do no harm"
    and
    medical care is the leading cause of bankruptcy in the USA
    ..............
    opponents of a single payer system have been the
    ama
    aha
    pharma
    insurance

    healthcare a multi-trillion dollar industry
    with that kind of money, lobbyist are cheap
    and
    campaign contributions are chump change
     
    Last edited: Feb 27, 2020
  10. Beer w/Straw Transcendental Ignorance! Valued Senior Member

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    6,549
    heh the insurance companies probably advocate for guns so more people end up hurt.

    Or, something.... I forget.
     
  11. sculptor Valued Senior Member

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    8,466
    15,292 people were fatally shot in The United States in 2019
    meanwhile
    250,000 people in the U.S. die every year from medical errors
    add in
    those who die because they cannot afford medical care
    and the ratio becomes ridiculous and yet----------what gets the focus?
     
  12. Beer w/Straw Transcendental Ignorance! Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    6,549
    Hey, I gotta admit to not understanding the US system.

    Countries not caring for the health of its citizens seems counter intuitive to civilization.
     
  13. Jeeves Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    5,089
    Only if you define civilization as "civil" or: a co-operative organization of humans for mutual protection and support.
    But if you step back and look at civilization as a pyramidal arrangement of classes for the upward flow of benefit, a lot more of its functions become clear.
    Anyway, with the global advance of predatory capitalism, national health insurance schemes in other countries are in more and more trouble. The Canadian one that we're all oh-so-proud of has been separating into tiers for decades now and is under constant pressure to reform -- which invariably translates into reducing services and raising premiums.
     
  14. Beer w/Straw Transcendental Ignorance! Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    6,549
    Still sounds more productive than starting a war. And if it wasn't for civilization, that's all there is left to do. That and sex.
     
  15. Baldeee Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    2,226
    Is there a Dummies Guide to the US healthcare system and alternatives being proposed?

    In the UK we all (well, most of us) pay National Insurance and Income tax which goes toward paying for our wonderful NHS system.
    Break a leg, or other emergency care?
    The NHS will fix it for you, although you’ll likely be stuck on a communal ward.
    Need non-urgent surgery?
    The NHS will probably carry it out for you... eventually... if you live in the right postcode area.

    We can then top this up with private medical insurance, where we get access to more facilities, possibly your own room to recover in, quicker access to those non-emergency operations etc.
    But it’s a good thing knowing that even the unemployed living on the street can get access to the emergency care they need.

    So what, in brief, is the US system, and is it any good?
     
  16. Jeeves Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    5,089
    Interesting philosophy.
     
  17. Beer w/Straw Transcendental Ignorance! Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    6,549
    It's basically Freud's.
     
  18. Jeeves Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    5,089
    It has some some very good bits and some very bad bits. Of course, they do have Medicare, medicaid, community clinics and charities. But each state has its own independent system and every city has jurisdiction.... Administrative chaos.
    There is some explanation, but the mainstream media don't seem to make any effort at informing the public. Issues arise one at a time, isolated from the whole and discussed - however heatedly - in an information vacuum.
     
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  19. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    20,069
    For-profit administrative chaos instead of not-for-profit administrative order. Get the picture?
     
  20. sculptor Valued Senior Member

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    8,466
    A) I doubt that anyone understands our healthcare system.
    B) "Countries not caring"-------------------------------huh wut
     
  21. sculptor Valued Senior Member

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    8,466
    EEEKK---OH NOooooo
    You want to get rid of all of those state bureaucracies?
    Taking on the
    ama
    aha
    pharma
    insurance
    conglomerates/cabals
    ain't enough for you?
    Now you want to unemploy (tens of?) thousands of state bureaucrats who make quite a comfortably living by creating and maintaining the chaos?

    It seems ever less likely that we (the whole population of the USA) will ever have a country wide single payer health care system.
    (too many wealthy elite enemies?)
     
  22. Jeeves Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    5,089
    The administrative chaos is from how the "system" is patched together from disparate jurisdictions, regulations, methods of funding, private and public services, private, religious, charitable and government facilities, uneven availability of qualified staff, regional health problems, environmental hazards and patient attitudes.
    It can't be fixed with federal legislation. You need a constitutional amendment, first. Then you'd have to pacify the state legislatures (municipal ones will come along quietly) and disarm the insurance/drug/supplier lobbies, and then get the doctors on board (nurses, techs and maintenance staff, should be no problem, just so you respect their union rights). Then, you'd have to dismantle the existing network in such a way as to avoid major disruption.
    Decorate Times square with 50-year-old christmas lights found in the attics of NYC. You have three hours.
    Then you have to re-educate the heads and office managers and accountants of the various departments to co-ordinate their efforts under new rules. Only then can you even begin to roll the many government agencies under a single administrative entity. And even when all that's finished, there is no guarantee of orderliness.
     

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