QUICK MEDICARE FOR ALL FACTS
Is It Government takeover of healthcare?
- Medicare for All: private hospitals and doctors.
- Health care providers bill central agency for services.
- Centralized system is the only way to effectively control prices. Medicare pays 20% less for medical services. Also more effective in combating fraud.
How will we pay for it?/Will it affect our taxes?
- How do you pay for what we have now? Premiums have doubled over past ten years.
- Medicare for All would be paid for by a payroll fee just like we do with Medicare. This would be significantly less than the current premiums paid by employers.
Choice
- We don’t currently have choice: employers choose health insurance plans, based on cost.
- Can only use healthcare providers in network.
- Medicare for All: use any healthcare provider we choose.
Rationing of healthcare?
- US healthcare system most rationed system in the world
- 1/3 of Americans do not get healthcare they need.
- Americans much more likely to defer medical care because of cost
- 84,000 deaths a year from preventable causes.
People 50-64
- Employers pay up to three times more for older employees.
- Extremely difficult to find jobs: job discrimination based on healthcare costs.
- Companies cannot hire who they want and need
Waiting time?
- Not one single-payer system in the rest of the world where has waiting time for emergency care.
- Taiwan and Germany: no wait time.
- Canadian system deliberately set up to include wait time for elective procedures to increase efficiency.
- Medicare for All system could have same priorities.
Job Loss?
- Majority of jobs in the health insurance industry low-paying, tedious, and stressful. They spend much time denying claims.
- Single-payer bill provides for extended unemployment compensation and retraining.
- Medicare for All will result in higher wages, creating greater demand for goods and services, and creating jobs.
Advantages of Medicare for All
- We can’t afford the current system. Medicare for All is the only way to bring healthcare costs under control
- Every study has found that there would be savings from Medicare for All
High Premiums
- Private insurance premiums doubled over past 10 years.
- Family of four: $23,000 (premiums and out-of-pocket expenses)
- Full-time minimum wage workers cannot earn enough to pay premiums
Employees
- Many employers offer health insurance to their full-time employees which may include high deductibles and co-pays.
- Many people who have health insurance assume they are adequately covered and it is not until they have a serious health problem that they find out what is not covered.
- The major cause of personal bankruptcies is medical expenses.
Healthcare providers
- Every physician spends $84,000 a year to deal with private insurance
- There are many nurses whose full-time job is to deal with paperwork related to insurance claims
- Insurance not doctors determines length of stay, drugs allowed, tests
Employers
- Penalized for the health of their employees.
- Have to pay as much as triple penalty on account of employees’ age. Health conditions can also raise rates.
- A few sick people can bring down a company.
Controlling costs
- US: most free-market driven healthcare system in world results in our paying twice as much.
- One out of three dollars in healthcare is wasted: that’s one trillion dollars a year
Skin in the Game
- · Research: even minimal cost-sharing requirements reduce healthcare utilization.
- We go to the doctor 4.2 times a year. Japanese: 13 times.
Purchase Insurance across State Lines
- Republicans claim that state restrictions stifle competition and drive up costs. Nowhere is there data that indicates that this is true.
- Where states have opened their borders, new insurers came in and quickly left: couldn’t compete. Allowing sales across state lines had no impact on prices.
Health Savings Plans
- Only work for people who are relatively healthy.
- Any serious illness will wipe out any savings very quickly.
Lawsuits
- Lawsuits only account for 2% of healthcare costs.
- 2% of these are frivolous
- Defensive medicine not a big driver of cost. Most of the cost: expensive procedures.
- Heart surgery: US: $150,000 Canada: $60,000
RESOURCES
https://www.facebook.com/Lehigh-Valley-Medicare-for-All-215354902300665/
Physicians for a National Health Program www.pnhp.org
U.S. House Medicare for All bill (H.R. 676) https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/676
U.S. Senate Medicare for All bill (S. 1804) https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/senate-bill/1804