Originally Posted by
boozehound
Medicare is in the Red in a large part because we have basically enacted a single payer system that kicks in when people hit 65 without any offsetting premiums from younger, healthier, people (outside of the Medicare tax, which is relatively minimal at 1.45%). That's not how risk pools work. It's fundamentally unsound mathematically. That's not an opinion - it's a verifiable fact. Even in cases where people have retiree healthcare benefits from a large corporation those benefits typically subordinate to Medicare, further adding to the cost.
Explain to me using facts, not talking points, how the concept of pooled risk somehow only applies in a private free market system. That is an insane thing to say.
Furthermore - in a version of a 'Medicare for all' type of scenario, let's look at the average American family:
The average American family makes $56K per year. They pay a 1.45% Medicare payroll tax which is $812 per year. Let's assume that they carry health insurance for the family at a cost of $600 per month (which is probably on the low side of average for decent coverage). They are paying $7200 per year in insurance premiums, not including the ubiquitous co-pays and deductibles. So they are paying 12.5% of their income for insurance. You could raise taxes, or simply charge a premium for single-payer healthcare, that would generate a significant amount of the revenue needed to fund it. I'm not even sure how much deficit expansion would be necessary, if any at all. If we want to talk about deficit reduction let's talk about military spending, and reducing some of that while spending more on healthcare and infrastructure.
It's also pretty universally regarded that preventative care reduces costs overall, which single payer would theoretically encourage.
This is generally how I feel - we can't simply just remove the profit motive from healthcare. It should still exist. I would, however, like to remove the profit the insurance companies (middlemen) make from the equation and use that savings to offset overall healthcare costs. Doctors, hospitals, and drug companies should still be profitable, and significantly so. The other challenge with comparing our outcomes to a lot of European countries is that we are so much unhealthier than they are, which has to have an impact on outcomes.
