Mark Cuban's Healthcare Fix: We Need a Single-Payer System

[Kaotic]

I like it...

http://blogmaverick.com/2017/03/08/some-thoughts-on-fixing-obamacare-shoot-holes-in-this-please/

Whether it's Medicaid or a new program, every single person in this country should be covered 100% for chronic physical or mental illness and for any life-threatening injury.

The premiums that we are paying to insurance companies as individuals or as company coverage for these significant risks would go from the insurance companies to the IRS. Only the cost of covering what's left would continue being paid to the insurance companies.

It would not be hard to do the math. Every insurance company does this analysis already. The government does this analysis already. We all would end up paying more in taxes, but less in insurance and healthcare costs over time.

There would be no mandates. There would be no individual penalties. No tax credits. No subsidies. No offsets or deductions for buying higher end insurance. This will be single payer (yes, I know it's a dirty phrase in this country) for chronic physical or mental illness and for any life threatening injury.

Everything not covered by the above can be covered by insurance sold on the free market, managed by the states, sold across state lines, without government interference.

[Eliot Rosewater]

1. No need for health insurance companies AT ALL.

[Alice11111]

8. Right! Only To make the rich richer and the poor poorer

[Eliot Rosewater]

11. You are conditioned to accept certaing things as normal.

Nothing about our system of capitalism is normal or healthy.

[Alice11111]

14. Right, but we have the greatest health care in the world,

we have the greatest schools, we are the smartest and best in every way. We are the greatest country in the world. That kind of thinking has taken us from the top of the heap, to "way down, in the hole."

[Eliot Rosewater]

18. What kind of thinking?

Capitalism isnt why we are great.

[Alice11111]

19. We were never a pure capitalist country anyway.

The only reason we kept insurance in health care is so the insurance companies and their investors could profit
It provides no benefits to healthcare. "Managed care," is just another Repub euphemism, which really means let the health insurance companies make more money, by denying or delaying care...until they go away...to the people who need it.

[mike_c]

2. I'd like to dance on the grave of the health insurance business model....

Rip the heart from the parasite class.

[Alice11111]

9. May I have this dance?

[Hortensis]

3. Perfect solution for 45's "I'll do it better and cheaper."

Might be a fast route to impeachment also. Kochs/Ryan/McConnell intend to destroy.

[Wounded Bear]

4. Costs WILL NOT go down while the Insurance industry is involved...

Repubs babbling about lowering costs are only talking about eliminating programs and reducing the Federal budget. Nothing they are proposing will lower costs for consumers.

[Kaotic]

5. This plan would shift the burden of the most expensive treatments to a non-profit gov't program

I don't know what % of healthcare spending is for life threatening or chronic conditions but I would guess over 50%. Think cancer, diabetes, heart disease etc.

[scscholar]

21. More government control could reduce the amount spent on those things

So many people unfairly get more money spent on them.

[Alice11111]

7. The middle man sucking $$ from both ends...patients &

Medical services. We are the only country that does this. I've been saying it for years. The Repub response is a stupid remark like, but wouldn't that be "socialized medicine." Then they opine something like, That would mean we would be communists, or taken over by Russia...imagine that.
How can these people be so, so STUPID.
Can't we eradicate them.


Thanks Mark Cuban for being on the side of logic!

[Kaotic]

13. We have gov't run defense, law enforcement & judicial system to protect citizens...

nobody calls it socialism. Healthcare is just another system to protect citizens. No one is getting rich by receiving medical treatments...but many of the middlemen managing the system to dole out healthcare are getting rich...they are parasites in a system set up to enable and encourage profit mongering at the expense of other people's suffering.

[Alice11111]

16. For sure.

[madinmaryland]

22. Sad. But we ARE being taken over be Russia.

And the repubicans are letting it happen.

[Alice11111]

24. They are facilitating it, because of the deals they made,

or to get the policies they want, from the people who made the deals, who they are protecting.

[alarimer]

6. Other countries manage to do it.

I don't see why we can't.

Well, we can't because people bitch about taxes. It is true that taxes in those countries are arguably higher, but I'd say that is because too many people here don't pay enough taxes (corporations, rich people). My insurance (through my employer) is something like $5000 in premiums alone. To say nothing of out of pocket expenses, which for me are not much so far.

Still, I cannot believe that any tax increase to cover single payer would be $5000 a year. It just wouldn't because of economies of scale and not having to provide profit for the insurance companies. And of course we wouldn't have out of pocket costs either.

[metalbot]

12. Taxes are part of it

But a broader question is what to do about the pension funds. If you eliminated all of the insurance companies today (poof!), and implemented singled payer, then $200B+ comes out of the stock market. Most of that is institutionally owned, which means it hits pension and retirement funds hard.

I agree that single payer is the way to go, but you also have to figure out what you're going to do when a bunch of people say "We can no longer meet our pension obligations", or "We can meet our pension obligations only by drastically reducing government services".

You could decide to suck it up, and have the tax payer eat the losses, which wouldn't be the end of the world (relative to what we're willing to spend on extended warfare), but it's going to be incredibly unpopular, since none of that $200B is going towards healthcare, it's just an investor payoff.

[alarimer]

15. I'm sure if implementation took, say, 10 years they would have time to switch those funds.

I don't think insurance companies would go away entirely. They might be used for supplemental things that might not be covered by single payer.

[TexasBushwhacker]

26. As it is, many insurance companies are in the Medicare

and Medicaid business. I can only assume they are making money because otherwise they wouldn't be doing it.

I have Medicare Part C through Amerigroup and I don't pay a dime more in premiums than what is taken for Part B from my SSDI. My copays for my PCP are $15 and for specialists it's $30. My prescriptions happen to be all generic and I pay $3.30 for each, even if it's for a 90 day supply (up to 100 pills). I had to have an echocardiogram and it cost me $250. And the insurance company is still making money off me.

Now when people get older and more ill, they often switch back to traditional Medicare so they have a bigger choice of specialists. But imagine how much money would flow into the system if everyone were participating in it.

[Alice11111]

27. Insurance could be like schools, as it is in other countries.

You can attend, free decent public schools, or you can pay for private, which may or may not be better. (Sometimes private schools just take kids who couldnt make it in the public schools, like DT.). With health care, you can get free, decent public health care or you can also get an expensive insurance policy, for those who want it, luxury rooms, whatever.

[alarimer]

38. Single Payer is also not the only option.

Many countries (France, I think is one) do have health insurance companies, but they are so strictly regulated that costs are contained and, for the patient at least, minimal. I don't know what that would mean for those companies and their stocks. Clearly their could not pay their CEOs obscene amounts of money. Look at Tricare, health insurance for veterans. My partner has that and the premiums are small, the copays nearly nonexistent.

I think Medicare for all is the model we use conceptually because it already exists, so extending it to all seems like a natural option. But it certainly isn't the only way to go.

[Alice11111]

40. I agree. There are other options, andMedicare expansion,

at least, would not be reinventing the wheel (which the Repubs are trying to ram through so fast, it is a square wheel with notches, pun intended). It is still good that Cuban is speaking the unspeakable to Repubs, especially when they are on such a roll to repeal decent? health care.

[leftstreet]

10. DURec

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

17. What do you mean "chronic"? What is "life-threatening"?

The weasels will screw with the definitions of each incident, each treatment, each side-effect, the edges of what's paid and what's not are fuzzy.

It sounds simple, but I think the "gotchas" will still send people into bankruptcy.

How about "single-payer" for everything?

[Alice11111]

28. Paul Ryan wallows in that shit.

[mn9driver]

20. The health insurance industry will never stand for it.

And because our system is bought and paid for by them and those like them, it will not happen.

Period.

[kacekwl]

23. People complain about insurance industry jobs that will be lost

but , sorry alot of industries have gone bust and they could have saved themselves by playing ball 're: Obamacare but decided not to even after perks given to them.

[PoliticAverse]

33. The Insurance industry played ball which is why Obamacare passed. n/t

[Alice11111]

29. Agree, unless we can get our toe in with a public option...

Then, it will take off. Of course, that is sort of how Obamacare started, and then when it took off, the Repubs determined to kill it. They are owned by the health insurance lobby. Very hard to fight and change that. Hillary and Bill came close. Valent effort. Obama actually started.

Now, the STUPID are in power, and they may not know much, " it's complicated," but they know that they want their palms greased.

[erronis]

32. Wow - great series of comments, Alice11111 (5?)

I think the real medical professionals expect there will be a move towards payment based on value rendered.

It is only the medical "industry" that wants their money up-front (insurance).

It seems totally strange that the US makes medical insurance a "benefit" of employment. It really wasn't too long ago that most of us talked to the doctor and hospital about how much the procedure would cost. Now it is an opaque quid-pro-quo between these corporate behemoths that actually have no interest in us getting better.

"Worser, slower" - that could be the motto for for healthcare in the republican world. Of course, all semblance of caring would end when the bank account was drained.

[Alice11111]

34. Thank you. "Caring will end when the bank account

is drained." How true, like dental care. Poor people can just lose their teeth becase insurance for dental is a joke.
Medicare patients, they keep until the last days of insurance coverage, sick or not. Then, they kick them out, no matter how sick they are. It would balance out more nicely to treat people when they need it, rather than because insurance will pay, and release them when they can safely go home, rather than holding them hostage, and then throwing them out. It is down the rabbit whole where up is down. We are used to it and put up with it, like the frog in boiling water analogy, which is actually unpleasant.

I agree, "Worser, Slower," to the point sometimes treatment is a moot point or one has become so sick, there is a whole different set of problems to treat.

[March 4th]

25. Looks like somebody's got Presidentitis

[NotThisTime]

36. He can be a hot head but he's actually quite smart having come up from nothing he has a big clue

[warmfeet]

30. We need single payer.

We will not make it any other way. Grow up, USA, and join the rest of the industrialized world.

[Alice11111]

35. Actually, the USA got alzheimers.

We don't seem to be heading in the direction of growing up.

[warmfeet]

41. Too true, unfortunately.

I still have hope though.

[Alice11111]

42. Hope, the people, the press, and for a bit, the courts,

until he decimates them.

[warmfeet]

43. I don't give up,

not easily, that's for sure.

[PoliticAverse]

31. "There would be no individual penalties." - I'm pretty sure if you didn't pay your taxes there'd be

a penalty to you individually.

[akbacchus_BC]

37. Single Payer System is the best ever. It is what we have in Canada and it works well.

[Alice11111]

44. Are any Canadians taking in Americans?

[ProfessorGAC]

39. Why Mention Taxes, Mark?

Don't call it a tax. It's a PREMIUM. It's a premium now, and it's still going to behave like a premium under the model he describes.

Not sure i like the idea that only chronic or catastrophic coverage be single payer, but i think as soon as mention "taxes" the TP idiots will be against it, no matter how good an idea it is.

The salesmanship needs to include an avoidance of "taxes" and getting people to understand that it's an insurance premium, just like the premiums they pay today for EVERY kind of insurance.

[Alice11111]

45. They like the phrase "tax benefit" or "tax deduction"

If we could have a single payer system and call it the "Tax Reduction Plan for the Wealthy," that might work. In general, they aren't too smart and they vote against their own self interest.

[Initech]

46. We had one proposed in 2009. Anyone remember that?

And the republicans shot it down and created ACA. Am I the only one who remembers this?