Chris Hayes: This is the single most important chart for understanding US healthcare.

[BeckyDem]

Link to tweet

[RHMerriman]

1. And from the Kaiser Family Foundation, no less...

And from the Kaiser Family Foundation, no less...

[BeckyDem]

2. Yes! lol

[George II]

3. That chart represents what's happening now. If we reduce the US "blue" portion of the bar....

....the "green" portion of the bar will increase.

[lamsmy]

4. Not necessarily

1. The US health care system spends an estimated 30% more than Canada for administrative (paperwork) tasks. Canadians never see a bill.

2. Single payer systems negotiate for much lower prices on large purchases of prescription drugs.

3. Prevention is critical to reducing costs. For example, ensuring all expectant mothers and young children have timely checkups can dramatically increase early detection rates. Prevention is much cheaper than treatment.

[BeckyDem]

5. Thank you. +1

[Pacifist Patriot]

10. Well said

[George II]

14. Another thing to keep in mind is the relative populations of all the countries shown:

Other than the United States, all of those countries have less than 90 million people, making the overall administration of any program a lot less expensive per capita.

I'm not saying there won't be an overall reduction, but it's not going to as much as people think and it's going to be more difficult to implement than people think.

[MadDAsHell]

17. Challenge with #1 is I've not seen any indications that SP will reduce the regulatory burden.

We save $ when medical professionals can actually deliver care, not spend 5-10 minutes with a patient for every hour+ of compliance-related duties. If anything, having everyone on Medicare/caid would INCREASE the regulatory burden, because all the rules that didn’t apply to a practice’s commercially insured patients now would, wouldn’t they?

I’m 100% behind the single payer push, but things like “Medicare for All” is just a bumper sticker unless those details are hashed out.

[thesquanderer]

6. not necessarily.

You're assuming one will pick up the slack for a reduction in the other. But another option is that more people can get inadequate treatment or die.

[dpibel]

8. But not one-to-one

Because we would no longer be paying administrative costs, pr and lobbying, and profit.

In other words, yes, the green bar would grow, but not as tall as the blue bar.

[thesquanderer]

7. Is percent of GDP the best/only point of comparison?

What about per capita (cost-per-person)?

[BeckyDem]

11. There are links within the information sheet.

How can we afford it?

By slashing administrative waste, retaining current public funding of care, introducing modest new taxes based on ability to pay, and using the new system’s bargaining clout.

The system would be funded in part by the savings obtained from replacing today’s welter of inefficient, profit-oriented, private insurance companies – and the system-wide administrative waste they generate – with a single streamlined, nonprofit public payer. Such savings, estimated in 2017 to be about $500 billion annually, would be redirected to patient care.

Existing tax revenue would fund much of the system. According to a 2016 study in the American Journal of Public Health, tax-funded expenditures already account for about two-thirds of U.S. health spending. That revenue would be retained and supplemented by modest new taxes based on ability to pay, taxes that would typically be fully offset by the elimination of today’s premiums and out-of-pocket expenses for care. The vast majority of U.S. households – one study says 95 percent – would come out financially ahead.

http://www.pnhp.org/facts/single-payer-faq#002

[George II]

15. Per capita would be a much more representative of the actual cost overall. GDP is tied...

....to many other factors that little or nothing to do with health expenditures.

If GDP goes down, health costs (wonder why they don't refer to it as "healthcare"?) won't necessarily go down.

[Moostache]

16. I see your point...but why should healthcare be measured in $$$ or profits at all?

I am always frustrated by this claim: "America is the greatest country in the world."

Not just for the reasons Aaron Sorkin laid out in the ever-popular opening to "Newsroom" (Jeff Daniels nails that speech BTW), but in more general terms too...more of a Bobby Kennedy discussion of what GDP cannot measure about a nation....basically EVERYTHING important.

University of Kansas, March 18, 1968

Even if we act to erase material poverty, there is another greater task, it is to confront the poverty of satisfaction - purpose and dignity - that afflicts us all.

Too much and for too long, we seemed to have surrendered personal excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our Gross National Product, now, is over $800 billion dollars a year, but that Gross National Product - if we judge the United States of America by that - that Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage.

It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.

Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials.

It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.

And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.

Americans and our media are obsessed with selling and buying and maintaining the ultimate capitalist focus - BUY MORE NOW, BUY MORE LATER, BUY!!! BUY!!! BUY!!! and if you can't, then ENVY!!! ENVY!!! ENVY!!!

But healthcare is among the services I believe should be beyond the profit motive. Our nation, to be truly "great", to make citizenship truly a blessing and something beautiful and worthy of a great people, should include absolute social safety nets - knowledge that healthcare will NEVER bankrupt you or your family, knowledge that preventable diseases would receive attention and corrections BEFORE someone drops dad for lack of a co-pay or doctor to visit. We find ungodly sums of money to finance bullets and bombs and tanks and planes...yet we cannot find the same largesse for books and labs and schools and teachers.

Whenever the profit motive or its terminology are applied to healthcare unchallenged I feel the nation become just a little more craven and crass than it already is. In 50 years time, we have gone from RFK opining on the problem and offering philosophical challenges to the nation to think about and to push for better to the current usurper in chief's constant lies and efforts to distill EVERYTHING down to a binary equation - "does this help Trump or not?".

I weep for the nation at what was lost 50 years ago in Los Angeles and for what we currently have become, and healthcare is only one small battlefield in the greater war we are losing badly...

[ProfessorPlum]

19. See this link for other comparisons (including per capita) for healthcare spending

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/health-costs-how-the-us-compares-with-other-countries

It's a bit outdated now.

[Native]

9. And it's been this way for many years!

I've been pointing this out to people for years and years, but they either refuse to believe it or their eyes glaze over when you mention the GDP (my guess is they have no idea of what I'm talking about). And when I dumb it down for them, I always get the same response, "But look how long people in Canada have to wait for an operation!"

They only see what they want to see.

[BeckyDem]

13. There has been loads of propaganda but we are finally winning this war imo.

[uponit7771]

12. Please understand this is not HCI buy the care part

[ProfessorPlum]

18. of course

I'm blue in the face from making this point over and over, year after year

we ALREADY pay for medicare for all. We just aren't getting it

[ck4829]

20. Kick