I’ve been working in medical billing and jumping through insurance companies’ hoops over a decade now. TLDR: the house always wins. Everyone else loses - the patients, the hospitals, AND the doctors and other staff. There’s a ton of unnecessary bureaucracy and administration and it’s wasteful.
As somebody who lives where UHC is normal, every person pays a small premium to the government's insurance program. The people who make less than $20k a year pay nothing, and the people who earn over $200k a year pay a premium of $900 a year. There is no profit in the system, so everybody gets paid what they're worth.
Can't explain that to Americans. They don't care that they're paying $1,000 a month to insurance companies and it would only be $400 a month under UHC. They just hear "tax" and freak the hell out. 🤷♀️
He's asking how much do the doctors make. Not how much the people pay into the system. Something I'm curious about. According to publicly available information, US doctors make upward of 60% more on average than Canadian ones. --- Canadian Institute for Health Information 2019 --- Resolve, 2024
Few things to add. Part of what drives up healthcare costs in the US are the for profit insurance companies. Thus any savings they negotiate largely go into their pockets rather than the pockets of those paying for the insurance. Get rid of them in favor of a universal healthcare system and you would see costs drop like a rock. The other thing to note as to why other countries tend to be healthier than those in the US is that they often also have robust workers rights laws in place that guarantee greater amount of paid time off and prevent employers from penalizing their employees for taking time off when they're sick. Combine this w/universal health care and you have a population that is overall healthier because they are more willing to go see a doctor and get treatment when they're ill since doing so won't negatively impact their finances. Furthermore that leads into people staying home when they are actually sick and thus limits the spread of illness which means less people getting sick which means less workers taking time off which means more productive workers. The benefits to both universal healthcare and strong workers rights laws for society are astronomical. But because the US is an oligarchy and those things would make the wealthy slightly less wealthy while helping the working class, we can't have any of that.
There are So many examples Around the World! We are ALREADY PAYING and for way more than what is being returned in services. It would take less to pay thru taxes because the For Profit Margins would be gone. Single Payer makes so much more sense.
People always use the "but whose going to pay for it?" and it's so tiring to explain over and over. I'd rather just let them pay more than trying to convince them they're wrong.
Convincing the citizenry that the US is just barely able to pay its bills is possibly the greatest scam ever pulled. We're moving 25-30 TRILLION dollars a year. We're nowhere near broke. We literally have more money than god. We don't even have to reduce our military spending for this. We could even double it and still have plenty to pay for UHC!
I’m so sick of the “why should I pay for someone else” line of bull that people always gravitate to when this topic comes up. We already pay taxes (that in part pay for social services) AND we pay insurance, co-pays, co-insurance, deductibles, and drug costs. I’m not sure why it’s such a hard concept to grasp: we’d be better off by switching to UHC. The only thing stopping it is the brainwashing from politicians.
@Zetirix 1) Wrestling with insurance companies constantly to get paid, I've heard from so many doctors that insurance bureaucracy is insane, 2) wrestling with insurance companies to get care for your patients, 3) not having to watch your patients die from delayed or denied care, 4) better health outcomes, 5) You benefit from the system too, and so does your family, for much less out of pocket. Your chances of medical bankruptcy are far lower if not nonexistent. I could go on. But I think you get the point. You get to practice medicine, the thing you went to school for, rather than constantly having to do insurance paperwork. And 85k is the very low end of a doctor's salary in Canada, and can go as high as 500k just like in the States, with most salaries somewhere in the middle.
Speaking of the foods we eat, there is some into out there that says we do something to our wheat that no one else does that greatly contributes to our obesity here in the USA. Also, the health experts were wrong about their so called food pyramid which loaded everyone up too much on carbs.
The ridiculous part is, that Americans already pay more for medicaid/medicare, than most other countries pay for universal healthcare. So you could in theory do away with all commercial health insurance and should still able to provide the same level or better healthcare.
It isn't as simple as he lays it out, that is the basics of it. It is extremely complicated. Just saying I want UHC doesn't mean anything unless you define what that means. If that means all healthcare available is free? That is completely unreasonable. If you are saying you get the basics for free, what does that mean? Does that mean the government now takes over deciding what gets approved or not? That might be reasonable, but is it really an improvement? Maybe, but it isn't unreasonable to question it.
@@Laich-yi6nf it’s not as complicated as you say. There is no mechanism for the government to deny you healthcare if the law is written properly. If you need healthcare, weather that’s medication, doc visits, surgery, cancer treatment, etc, everyone gets what they need. The taxes are collected to pay for it and the drug companies and hospitals, docs, etc, are compelled by the weight of government and the threat of nationalization, to provide a fair price. You could even cap the profit in a sector, ie, “pharmaceutical companies must operate at 6% profit margin” or my preference, “all drugs will be sold to the us at cost” (including labor and all that). It’s only complicated if you imagine the government acting like an insurance company trying to maximize profit. The government is the only entity that can operate without regard for profit and therefore you can spend every single dollar of medical profit on actual health care. It would be almost impossible for a single payer system to be more expensive or more cruel than the for profit system. Profit definitionally is money made after all expenses are paid. To make profit you have to take in more money than you spend. Insurance companies shouldn’t make any profits, ever. If you collect more than is needed, that money can go in a fund and we can spend it when it is needed. We don’t owe businesses a right to profit, or even a right to exist. The government could make private insurance illegal tomorrow if they wanted to.
Picture a health insurance system, except everyone's in it. Also the agency operating the insurance isn't trying to pay for some dickhead's fleet of yachts, so the price tag is smaller. Honestly, I don't know that Canadians are putting that much effort in to healthier lifestyles (some, but not lots), but we can go see a doctor when we think we should and do not go delaying care out of fear of gigantic bills. It's amazing how much easier it is to treat conditions when you can get them checked before they're life-threatening.
Given that the average american spends between $10,000 and $15,000 per year on healthcare NOW, even if taxes went up by, say, $5,000 a year, but healthcare was free, that would still be a net savings of between $5,000 and $10,000 per american. Doing the math like this helps debunk a lot of the counter-arguments.
So a Welshman on $45,000 a year pays $2410 a year in National Insurance (effectively the UK equivalent of your Insurance company fees) that's not a guess that the actual figure, if you adopted the same level of payments as the UK then how much better off would the average American be? don't forget that on guy paying $2410 covers him, his kids and his partner even if they donlt work (if his partner also works they pay in as well), nothing more on top
That payment includes your coverage for state benefits if you're unemployed or sick or pregnant etc, your state pension and your health care. Granted it should probably be higher because our last government has chronically under funded and under collected for reasons I'm not getting into! None of the benefits or pensions are amazing, they're a base line minimum amount. You would also pay to a private employers pension too. Still going to be much much cheaper though than US prices. Sometimes our wages will seem much lower, but we don't have to make as many direct payment the way you do in the US. To be honest, Germany probably has a better system.
These questions are stupid and disingenuous. Who pays? Who pay for our roads? Do they ask how that gets paid? Nope. They don't even realize they're only protecting the insurance companies. They are the only losers in a UHC system. That's exactly why we don't have it. 🤷🏾♀️
When you say, "Why should I pay for someone else?" The answer is "Because when it happens to you, they pay for YOU." That's how it works. It works on a system that assumes that EVERYONE won't get sick at the SAME TIME. ...plus Doctors and health facilities will charge less if they are sure they will be paid. Most people wouldn't be able to have Healthcare if they had to pay out of pocket because it's so expensive. Unfortunately, doctors are so used to the insurance companies ripping them off, that they don't discount any of their services very much.
In the '80s, I belonged to an HMO -- a health maintenance organization. The rates were comparable to the other major medical-insurance providers, but with a catch. When I went in for a thorough checkup, my rates went down a little. If I joined their stop-smoking support groups, my rates would go down a little. If a doctor recommended a course of treatment for something, and I followed their guidance, my rates would go down a little. The HMOs were trying to make their clients a little healthier, and thus less of a financial drain, then sharing those savings with their members. It was very much like joining a credit union rather than a bank.
America is so wrapped up in their individualism and "not like other girls"-ness that the things that work in every other industrialized nation on the planet can't possibly work here. 🙄
It's strange how some Americans are content to have untold billions siphoned from their taxes for the cause of collective defence but will not tolerate a fraction of that going to collective healthcare. Boggles the mind.
Another reason we have such poor health is because our government allows corporations to put additives in our food that they would not allow in other countries. So, the Doritos you buy here have a different recipe than in the UK for example. It's all about the ducats and your particular governments concern about its citizens.
I remember when my doctor's office had one person who's job was to bill Blue Cross/Blue Shield or Medicare. That was over ninety percent of patients. A few decades later than had ten people working on billing due to so many different insurance programs and policies. Who do you think pays for all that extra overhead??? Since that time most of my doctors signed up as employees of a large hospital based system to offload all of that overhead plus to get better rates on malpractice insurance. In my area there are TWO SYSTEMS that pretty much price fix their services instead of real competition. Thousand of individual doctors are now under one of two systems who control everything and make massive profits to return to investors and to pay insane salaries to their executives who never see a patient. They are classed as "non profit" but that is word play. A huge number of those executives are "bean counters" not doctors.
His ignorance is astounding. UHC every developed country has this system and it’s one of the best program. I bet our tax dollars should go towards tax cuts for the oligarchs and through war.😂
Nearly twenty percent of our health care dollars go to the profits of insurance companies and their investors. They provide zero value to the health of our citizens and are an extra layer of waste. Medicare does the same job for two percent of funds. Just those savings alone would be huge. However do not confuse "Medicare Advantage", a for profit alternative, with original Medicare run by the CMMS. Medicare Advantage is similar to Employer Healthcare with private companies doing the service and taking it's profits out of the system and giving it to their employees and stock holders. One out of evey five dollars is overhead of insurance typically. Money down the drain.
One of the common criticisms i see against helping the homeless, universal healthcare, more public transport, or free or atleast affordable gov't funded college's is "muh tax dollars" but you realize that if more homeless people had jobs and roofs over their heads, more people could live by being able to go to the hospital, more people had transport to go to their jobs, and more people could go to college to get really good jobs, more people would be able to pay those taxes.
A lot of American culture pushes individualism, and it ends up leaning into this incredibly selfish idea of "I got my bag, why should I care about everyone else?" The entire point of a society, a civilization, is to band together to lift everyone up together. Without taxes, schools would be exclusively for the wealthy, "public" security would be exclusively for rich people who could pay private companies, food programs you may have benefitted from as a child would be struck down. There would be no public property, you'd have no parks, no roads to drive on, no public transit. In an ideal society, you give some of what you earn to the system, and you can rely on the system having safety nets in place for *everyone, including yourself.* I seriously don't understand these people. Your money won't matter when you're 6 feet under so why be so stingy with it?
I'm good with that if everybody in the United States at every socio-economic level and status and power had to do the same thing and get the same product. If ever that day should come I can assure you the quality of your health care is going to shoot through the roof😂
Paying via insurance schemes is a common way to pay for Universal Health Care. It's what Canada and Germany use and they are both federally organised nations so it's probably what the USA would go for. (And so do France and Japan and a lot of others.) For someone like me who has lived under a state organised Health Service his whole life, this is a little crazy. Insurance proper works when not everybody needs to access the services the insurance pays for. Most ships don't sink on the way to port. Most cars aren't stolen. Most houses don't burn down. There may be a few people who never need healthcare in their lives but they are a rare exception. Which makes paying for healthcare via taxes just a no brainer. But it's probably a Thought Too Far for most Americans. And as I say the Canadians go with an insurance based model so probably you would too. One thing that should be emphasised every time this comes up: having Universal Health Care does not make private healthcare illegal. Just largely irrelevant for most people. If you want to jump the line, if you want fancier hospital food and a private room, you can pay for it out of your own money. The Canadians tried to abolish private healthcare but their Supreme Court over-ruled the law. The UK made a bargain with the private consultants at the foundation of the system and has always had a parallel system. Most people don't use private healthcare.
I'm 70, living in the UK, until I was in my late 60s I saw a doctor maybe once every 5yrs or even longer, then in 2023 I got a bowel tumor, from seeing my GP when I first realised I had an issue the sequence of events was 1. Colonoscopy - not successful 2. Colonoscopy - sees there's an issue but unable to get clear picture 3. CT Scan - better idea of what's going on 4. CT Scan with imaging - Bingo! now we can see what's happening 5. 6 days later in for Operation 6. Operation successful no need for a stoma 7. Damn it! gasses leaking into chest cavity, CT Scan & 2nd Op at 11p.m on a Sunday night 8. Stoma made...success all good 9. 16 months of living with stoma, all supplies needed bags, wipes etc supplied free of charge, check ups every 6 months How much that would have cost in America I dread to think but I thank our NHS for saving my life every day
Dude I live on 5,500 a year. I don't have 4.00 to pay for food right now. I am about to be homeless soon because my greedy landlord is raising my rent to high for me to pay. I watch you everyday on UA-cam.
Deregulation has never, and will never, foster "true competition." The outcome is always predatory monopolies. It's been tried time and time again and it always fails. Healthcare is not a commodity and treating it like one is the reason we have such poor healthcare in the US. Everybody needs it, just like food, water and shelter. We pay far more for far less than any other industrialized country.
I'm all for universal healthcare, and insurance companies can go f*ck themselves, but there is another side to this that nobody seems to be aware of. In my country, we have both socialized healthcare, and private healthcare. You can use one, or the other, or both, but the coverage does not transfer between the public and the private sector. Meaning, you can rely solely on tax funded social insurance, but that will only cover your care in public institutions. If you want to use a private institution, you have to either have private insurance, or you have to pay on the spot. I don't know exactly how the system works in America but I'm under the impression, that all healthcare providers are private businesses. To them, a state funded health insurance entity is just a "whale" with very deep pockets. So how would such an insurer appearing on the market would affect healthcare costs? (even if the people don't have to pay directly, public budget is not limitless) How would the state negotiate coverage with these providers?
It's already done with Medicare. Medicare regulates what the doctors and hospitals can be paid for any given service. Which is why Medicare actually works well and is the best funded government program. The reality is that the US absolutely can do it and knows how to do it. The oligarchs and big companies just don't want to do it. And they've convinced enough people that it would be more expensive and complicated to do it than to change. It wouldn't be, but too many don't understand insurance or healthcare in general, so, they just accept what is being said.
Oh, and as to your question about private vs public systems. That is also a part of Medicare, already, too. Medicare is public/federal and by law accepted at 100% of hospitals. However it only pays for approximately 50% of all your potential bills. You have to buy a Medicare regulated supplement (medigap) to fill in the leftover costs. Or you can enter a Medicare Advantage plan, that is not federally regulated and managed by the private companies. "Medicare Advantage plans have cheaper monthly premiums, but also have private networks and higher out of pocket deductibles and copays if you get sick or want to go "out of network". They're not federally regulated and once you enter them, you actually give up your rights to your regular Medicare benefits (though you still pay the basic Medicare part B costs and have already paid your part A). If that sounds complicated and confusing, it is. And too many don't realize what they're getting into. Too many people get duped into giving up their rights to their basic Medicare benefits, because they don't understand the difference. And they buy into the spin of it being cheaper "up front". Not realizing they pay more in lack of coverage and back end costs. I spent a decade selling the supplements and retirement insurances. I trained people, explained it to clients, and dealt with Medicare, SS and Medicaid on behalf of my clients for all those years. It got to the point where I had to correct many barely trained people at Medicare and SS that didn't understand the relationship of the gap plans, MA's or SS payments into those programs. A good, well trained agent is a necessity, because the reality is people don't have the patience to learn how these things work. This is another reason that UHC would benefit the public, because it would remove the chaos of too many choices that are barely different as it is. Another thing Americans do not get, is UHC would also either bring down costs and/or increase coverage for Homeowners/Auto/property insurances. Once you don't have to include all of the potential injury/hospital costs that need to be covered under property insurances (injuries from car accidents or 'slip and falls' on your property) then that additional cost to the customer is mitigated by the UHC for both parties in a case. It is why a US person might pay, let's say, $100 a month for insurance on one car in the city for $50k/$100k/$50k in the US, versus a Canadian paying $100 a month in one of their cities, for the same car, but getting $1million/$2 million/$1 million in full comprehensive, collision and liability for injuries and property damage coverage. And any US insurance holder who doesn't understand those numbers I laid out, are part of the problem. We are a nation of dummies. That want everything done for us. But just like buying presliced cheese and paying extra for it, we don't bother to learn why they charge extra for it. Insurance is not nearly as complicated as people think. But it is made to be just complex enough to confuse that are unwilling to learn the basics.
I’ve been working in medical billing and jumping through insurance companies’ hoops over a decade now. TLDR: the house always wins. Everyone else loses - the patients, the hospitals, AND the doctors and other staff. There’s a ton of unnecessary bureaucracy and administration and it’s wasteful.
As somebody who lives where UHC is normal, every person pays a small premium to the government's insurance program. The people who make less than $20k a year pay nothing, and the people who earn over $200k a year pay a premium of $900 a year. There is no profit in the system, so everybody gets paid what they're worth.
Can't explain that to Americans. They don't care that they're paying $1,000 a month to insurance companies and it would only be $400 a month under UHC. They just hear "tax" and freak the hell out. 🤷♀️
He's asking how much do the doctors make. Not how much the people pay into the system. Something I'm curious about. According to publicly available information, US doctors make upward of 60% more on average than Canadian ones.
--- Canadian Institute for Health Information 2019
--- Resolve, 2024
@@dallaynavokan5513 Considering we went to war over 2% on tea... it's kind of our thing.
Few things to add. Part of what drives up healthcare costs in the US are the for profit insurance companies. Thus any savings they negotiate largely go into their pockets rather than the pockets of those paying for the insurance. Get rid of them in favor of a universal healthcare system and you would see costs drop like a rock.
The other thing to note as to why other countries tend to be healthier than those in the US is that they often also have robust workers rights laws in place that guarantee greater amount of paid time off and prevent employers from penalizing their employees for taking time off when they're sick. Combine this w/universal health care and you have a population that is overall healthier because they are more willing to go see a doctor and get treatment when they're ill since doing so won't negatively impact their finances. Furthermore that leads into people staying home when they are actually sick and thus limits the spread of illness which means less people getting sick which means less workers taking time off which means more productive workers.
The benefits to both universal healthcare and strong workers rights laws for society are astronomical. But because the US is an oligarchy and those things would make the wealthy slightly less wealthy while helping the working class, we can't have any of that.
There are So many examples Around the World! We are ALREADY PAYING and for way more than what is being returned in services. It would take less to pay thru taxes because the For Profit Margins would be gone. Single Payer makes so much more sense.
We even have examples of countries that uses BOTH systems, too.
@MagiRemmie sure gotta let the profiteers in on it so there can be political corruption.
So, if I'm a doctor, what's my motivation for working in a public system making ~80k versus a private one for ~250k?
I wish more people understood this.
People always use the "but whose going to pay for it?" and it's so tiring to explain over and over. I'd rather just let them pay more than trying to convince them they're wrong.
Convincing the citizenry that the US is just barely able to pay its bills is possibly the greatest scam ever pulled. We're moving 25-30 TRILLION dollars a year. We're nowhere near broke. We literally have more money than god. We don't even have to reduce our military spending for this. We could even double it and still have plenty to pay for UHC!
We pay for the executive salaries and bonuses. That's why it's such a mess.
I’m so sick of the “why should I pay for someone else” line of bull that people always gravitate to when this topic comes up. We already pay taxes (that in part pay for social services) AND we pay insurance, co-pays, co-insurance, deductibles, and drug costs. I’m not sure why it’s such a hard concept to grasp: we’d be better off by switching to UHC. The only thing stopping it is the brainwashing from politicians.
And selfishness at their own cost
People are willing to pay a literal premium to make sure that they aren't paying for someone else lol. Greed so strong it's detrimental
It's so "those people" don't get it.
So, I'm a doctor, convince me to make ~85k like I would in Canada, versus ~250k in the US. Go!
@Zetirix 1) Wrestling with insurance companies constantly to get paid, I've heard from so many doctors that insurance bureaucracy is insane, 2) wrestling with insurance companies to get care for your patients, 3) not having to watch your patients die from delayed or denied care, 4) better health outcomes, 5) You benefit from the system too, and so does your family, for much less out of pocket. Your chances of medical bankruptcy are far lower if not nonexistent.
I could go on. But I think you get the point. You get to practice medicine, the thing you went to school for, rather than constantly having to do insurance paperwork.
And 85k is the very low end of a doctor's salary in Canada, and can go as high as 500k just like in the States, with most salaries somewhere in the middle.
Speaking of the foods we eat, there is some into out there that says we do something to our wheat that no one else does that greatly contributes to our obesity here in the USA. Also, the health experts were wrong about their so called food pyramid which loaded everyone up too much on carbs.
New sub here from Toronto,Canada.Cheers
The ridiculous part is, that Americans already pay more for medicaid/medicare, than most other countries pay for universal healthcare. So you could in theory do away with all commercial health insurance and should still able to provide the same level or better healthcare.
Cannot reason with unreasonable people.
It isn't as simple as he lays it out, that is the basics of it. It is extremely complicated. Just saying I want UHC doesn't mean anything unless you define what that means. If that means all healthcare available is free? That is completely unreasonable. If you are saying you get the basics for free, what does that mean? Does that mean the government now takes over deciding what gets approved or not? That might be reasonable, but is it really an improvement? Maybe, but it isn't unreasonable to question it.
@@Laich-yi6nf it’s not as complicated as you say. There is no mechanism for the government to deny you healthcare if the law is written properly. If you need healthcare, weather that’s medication, doc visits, surgery, cancer treatment, etc, everyone gets what they need. The taxes are collected to pay for it and the drug companies and hospitals, docs, etc, are compelled by the weight of government and the threat of nationalization, to provide a fair price. You could even cap the profit in a sector, ie, “pharmaceutical companies must operate at 6% profit margin” or my preference, “all drugs will be sold to the us at cost” (including labor and all that).
It’s only complicated if you imagine the government acting like an insurance company trying to maximize profit. The government is the only entity that can operate without regard for profit and therefore you can spend every single dollar of medical profit on actual health care. It would be almost impossible for a single payer system to be more expensive or more cruel than the for profit system.
Profit definitionally is money made after all expenses are paid. To make profit you have to take in more money than you spend. Insurance companies shouldn’t make any profits, ever. If you collect more than is needed, that money can go in a fund and we can spend it when it is needed. We don’t owe businesses a right to profit, or even a right to exist. The government could make private insurance illegal tomorrow if they wanted to.
I've stopped running to the doctor every time I've felt bad years ago or popping an OTC. Healthier at 62 than I was at 52.
Picture a health insurance system, except everyone's in it. Also the agency operating the insurance isn't trying to pay for some dickhead's fleet of yachts, so the price tag is smaller.
Honestly, I don't know that Canadians are putting that much effort in to healthier lifestyles (some, but not lots), but we can go see a doctor when we think we should and do not go delaying care out of fear of gigantic bills. It's amazing how much easier it is to treat conditions when you can get them checked before they're life-threatening.
Given that the average american spends between $10,000 and $15,000 per year on healthcare NOW, even if taxes went up by, say, $5,000 a year, but healthcare was free, that would still be a net savings of between $5,000 and $10,000 per american. Doing the math like this helps debunk a lot of the counter-arguments.
So a Welshman on $45,000 a year pays $2410 a year in National Insurance (effectively the UK equivalent of your Insurance company fees) that's not a guess that the actual figure, if you adopted the same level of payments as the UK then how much better off would the average American be? don't forget that on guy paying $2410 covers him, his kids and his partner even if they donlt work (if his partner also works they pay in as well), nothing more on top
That payment includes your coverage for state benefits if you're unemployed or sick or pregnant etc, your state pension and your health care. Granted it should probably be higher because our last government has chronically under funded and under collected for reasons I'm not getting into! None of the benefits or pensions are amazing, they're a base line minimum amount. You would also pay to a private employers pension too. Still going to be much much cheaper though than US prices. Sometimes our wages will seem much lower, but we don't have to make as many direct payment the way you do in the US. To be honest, Germany probably has a better system.
These questions are stupid and disingenuous. Who pays? Who pay for our roads? Do they ask how that gets paid? Nope. They don't even realize they're only protecting the insurance companies. They are the only losers in a UHC system. That's exactly why we don't have it. 🤷🏾♀️
When you say, "Why should I pay for someone else?" The answer is "Because when it happens to you, they pay for YOU." That's how it works. It works on a system that assumes that EVERYONE won't get sick at the SAME TIME. ...plus Doctors and health facilities will charge less if they are sure they will be paid. Most people wouldn't be able to have Healthcare if they had to pay out of pocket because it's so expensive. Unfortunately, doctors are so used to the insurance companies ripping them off, that they don't discount any of their services very much.
In the '80s, I belonged to an HMO -- a health maintenance organization. The rates were comparable to the other major medical-insurance providers, but with a catch. When I went in for a thorough checkup, my rates went down a little. If I joined their stop-smoking support groups, my rates would go down a little. If a doctor recommended a course of treatment for something, and I followed their guidance, my rates would go down a little. The HMOs were trying to make their clients a little healthier, and thus less of a financial drain, then sharing those savings with their members. It was very much like joining a credit union rather than a bank.
They make every stupid excuse imaginable cuz it's "socialism"
Every other civilized country can do UHC, figure it out America
America is so wrapped up in their individualism and "not like other girls"-ness that the things that work in every other industrialized nation on the planet can't possibly work here. 🙄
It's strange how some Americans are content to have untold billions siphoned from their taxes for the cause of collective defence but will not tolerate a fraction of that going to collective healthcare. Boggles the mind.
Another reason we have such poor health is because our government allows corporations to put additives in our food that they would not allow in other countries. So, the Doritos you buy here have a different recipe than in the UK for example. It's all about the ducats and your particular governments concern about its citizens.
well, there shouldn't be ANYONE getting RICH off of it.
I remember when my doctor's office had one person who's job was to bill Blue Cross/Blue Shield or Medicare. That was over ninety percent of patients. A few decades later than had ten people working on billing due to so many different insurance programs and policies. Who do you think pays for all that extra overhead??? Since that time most of my doctors signed up as employees of a large hospital based system to offload all of that overhead plus to get better rates on malpractice insurance. In my area there are TWO SYSTEMS that pretty much price fix their services instead of real competition. Thousand of individual doctors are now under one of two systems who control everything and make massive profits to return to investors and to pay insane salaries to their executives who never see a patient. They are classed as "non profit" but that is word play. A huge number of those executives are "bean counters" not doctors.
His ignorance is astounding. UHC every developed country has this system and it’s one of the best program. I bet our tax dollars should go towards tax cuts for the oligarchs and through war.😂
Ever heard of Medicare.
Not the same at all
Nearly twenty percent of our health care dollars go to the profits of insurance companies and their investors. They provide zero value to the health of our citizens and are an extra layer of waste. Medicare does the same job for two percent of funds. Just those savings alone would be huge. However do not confuse "Medicare Advantage", a for profit alternative, with original Medicare run by the CMMS. Medicare Advantage is similar to Employer Healthcare with private companies doing the service and taking it's profits out of the system and giving it to their employees and stock holders. One out of evey five dollars is overhead of insurance typically. Money down the drain.
One of the common criticisms i see against helping the homeless, universal healthcare, more public transport, or free or atleast affordable gov't funded college's is "muh tax dollars" but you realize that if more homeless people had jobs and roofs over their heads, more people could live by being able to go to the hospital, more people had transport to go to their jobs, and more people could go to college to get really good jobs, more people would be able to pay those taxes.
A lot of American culture pushes individualism, and it ends up leaning into this incredibly selfish idea of "I got my bag, why should I care about everyone else?" The entire point of a society, a civilization, is to band together to lift everyone up together. Without taxes, schools would be exclusively for the wealthy, "public" security would be exclusively for rich people who could pay private companies, food programs you may have benefitted from as a child would be struck down. There would be no public property, you'd have no parks, no roads to drive on, no public transit.
In an ideal society, you give some of what you earn to the system, and you can rely on the system having safety nets in place for *everyone, including yourself.* I seriously don't understand these people. Your money won't matter when you're 6 feet under so why be so stingy with it?
How the hell are people still confused about how UHC works?
Which is more profitable for you if we subscribe to youtube or patreon?
I'm good with that if everybody in the United States at every socio-economic level and status and power had to do the same thing and get the same product. If ever that day should come I can assure you the quality of your health care is going to shoot through the roof😂
Paying via insurance schemes is a common way to pay for Universal Health Care. It's what Canada and Germany use and they are both federally organised nations so it's probably what the USA would go for. (And so do France and Japan and a lot of others.)
For someone like me who has lived under a state organised Health Service his whole life, this is a little crazy. Insurance proper works when not everybody needs to access the services the insurance pays for. Most ships don't sink on the way to port. Most cars aren't stolen. Most houses don't burn down.
There may be a few people who never need healthcare in their lives but they are a rare exception. Which makes paying for healthcare via taxes just a no brainer. But it's probably a Thought Too Far for most Americans. And as I say the Canadians go with an insurance based model so probably you would too.
One thing that should be emphasised every time this comes up: having Universal Health Care does not make private healthcare illegal. Just largely irrelevant for most people. If you want to jump the line, if you want fancier hospital food and a private room, you can pay for it out of your own money. The Canadians tried to abolish private healthcare but their Supreme Court over-ruled the law. The UK made a bargain with the private consultants at the foundation of the system and has always had a parallel system. Most people don't use private healthcare.
I'm 70, living in the UK, until I was in my late 60s I saw a doctor maybe once every 5yrs or even longer, then in 2023 I got a bowel tumor, from seeing my GP when I first realised I had an issue the sequence of events was
1. Colonoscopy - not successful
2. Colonoscopy - sees there's an issue but unable to get clear picture
3. CT Scan - better idea of what's going on
4. CT Scan with imaging - Bingo! now we can see what's happening
5. 6 days later in for Operation
6. Operation successful no need for a stoma
7. Damn it! gasses leaking into chest cavity, CT Scan & 2nd Op at 11p.m on a Sunday night
8. Stoma made...success all good
9. 16 months of living with stoma, all supplies needed bags, wipes etc supplied free of charge, check ups every 6 months
How much that would have cost in America I dread to think but I thank our NHS for saving my life every day
💙
Dude I live on 5,500 a year. I don't have 4.00 to pay for food right now. I am about to be homeless soon because my greedy landlord is raising my rent to high for me to pay.
I watch you everyday on UA-cam.
We need to deregulate much of it and allow true competition, just like any business
Healthcare should not be seen as a business.
Healthcare as a business is an obscenity, how can you think of making money out of a child suffering from cancer, or a mother with a broken leg....
Deregulation has never, and will never, foster "true competition." The outcome is always predatory monopolies. It's been tried time and time again and it always fails.
Healthcare is not a commodity and treating it like one is the reason we have such poor healthcare in the US. Everybody needs it, just like food, water and shelter. We pay far more for far less than any other industrialized country.
Medical care isn’t soemthing that should be run like a business
Also deregulation encourages less competionv
I'm all for universal healthcare, and insurance companies can go f*ck themselves, but there is another side to this that nobody seems to be aware of.
In my country, we have both socialized healthcare, and private healthcare. You can use one, or the other, or both, but the coverage does not transfer between the public and the private sector. Meaning, you can rely solely on tax funded social insurance, but that will only cover your care in public institutions. If you want to use a private institution, you have to either have private insurance, or you have to pay on the spot.
I don't know exactly how the system works in America but I'm under the impression, that all healthcare providers are private businesses. To them, a state funded health insurance entity is just a "whale" with very deep pockets. So how would such an insurer appearing on the market would affect healthcare costs? (even if the people don't have to pay directly, public budget is not limitless) How would the state negotiate coverage with these providers?
It's already done with Medicare. Medicare regulates what the doctors and hospitals can be paid for any given service. Which is why Medicare actually works well and is the best funded government program.
The reality is that the US absolutely can do it and knows how to do it. The oligarchs and big companies just don't want to do it. And they've convinced enough people that it would be more expensive and complicated to do it than to change. It wouldn't be, but too many don't understand insurance or healthcare in general, so, they just accept what is being said.
Oh, and as to your question about private vs public systems. That is also a part of Medicare, already, too. Medicare is public/federal and by law accepted at 100% of hospitals.
However it only pays for approximately 50% of all your potential bills. You have to buy a Medicare regulated supplement (medigap) to fill in the leftover costs. Or you can enter a Medicare Advantage plan, that is not federally regulated and managed by the private companies. "Medicare Advantage plans have cheaper monthly premiums, but also have private networks and higher out of pocket deductibles and copays if you get sick or want to go "out of network". They're not federally regulated and once you enter them, you actually give up your rights to your regular Medicare benefits (though you still pay the basic Medicare part B costs and have already paid your part A). If that sounds complicated and confusing, it is. And too many don't realize what they're getting into.
Too many people get duped into giving up their rights to their basic Medicare benefits, because they don't understand the difference. And they buy into the spin of it being cheaper "up front". Not realizing they pay more in lack of coverage and back end costs.
I spent a decade selling the supplements and retirement insurances. I trained people, explained it to clients, and dealt with Medicare, SS and Medicaid on behalf of my clients for all those years. It got to the point where I had to correct many barely trained people at Medicare and SS that didn't understand the relationship of the gap plans, MA's or SS payments into those programs.
A good, well trained agent is a necessity, because the reality is people don't have the patience to learn how these things work.
This is another reason that UHC would benefit the public, because it would remove the chaos of too many choices that are barely different as it is.
Another thing Americans do not get, is UHC would also either bring down costs and/or increase coverage for Homeowners/Auto/property insurances. Once you don't have to include all of the potential injury/hospital costs that need to be covered under property insurances (injuries from car accidents or 'slip and falls' on your property) then that additional cost to the customer is mitigated by the UHC for both parties in a case.
It is why a US person might pay, let's say, $100 a month for insurance on one car in the city for $50k/$100k/$50k in the US, versus a Canadian paying $100 a month in one of their cities, for the same car, but getting $1million/$2 million/$1 million in full comprehensive, collision and liability for injuries and property damage coverage. And any US insurance holder who doesn't understand those numbers I laid out, are part of the problem. We are a nation of dummies. That want everything done for us. But just like buying presliced cheese and paying extra for it, we don't bother to learn why they charge extra for it.
Insurance is not nearly as complicated as people think. But it is made to be just complex enough to confuse that are unwilling to learn the basics.