Urban Institute analysis of Sanders Single Payer Plan: May 2016

[ehrnst]

97. First off, Universal Health Care is not interchangeable with Single Payer

any more than Teacup Yorkie is interchangeable with canine, so the trope that anyone who thinks Single Payer isn't the best way, out of several, to get to universal healthcare is incorrect. Knowing something about what you are "jumping on board with," is important.

Most of the rest of the world uses multi-payer programs to achieve Universal Health Care Coverage.

The term “single-payer” is itself misleading. The truth is that many of the systems we refer to as single-payer are a lot more complicated than we tend to think they are. Canada, for example, finances basic health care through six provincial payers. Its Medicare system provides good, basic coverage, but around two in three Canadians purchase supplemental insurance because it doesn’t cover things like prescription drugs, dental health, or vision care. About 30 percent of all Canadian health care is financed through the private sector.

Most countries have mixed funding schemes that vary in complexity, and the term “single-payer” may be giving some people a false promise. Conyers’s Medicare-for-All bill promises to cover virtually everything while banishing out-of-pocket costs, but no other health-care system offers such expansive benefits. Even people living in Scandinavian social democracies face out-of-pocket expenses: In 2015, the most recent year for OECD data, the Swedes covered 15 percent of their health costs out-of-pocket; in Norway, it was 14 percent and the Finns shelled out 20 percent out-of-pocket.

So, by your definition, nearly all of the countries that have achieved universal health care, "Don't have it," "don't believe in it, "and don't see healthcare as a right." Which is clearly not the case at all.


Now that you know the difference between the terms "single payer" and "universal health care" dismissing all people who are able to distinguish between with backhanded demonization like "they don't believe health care is a right" or just don't "believe" in Universal Health Care is not only misinformed, it's insulting and counterproductive. Nearly as much as when Single Payer or bust advocates say that anyone who sees real problems with focusing on the one most expensive and hard to implement path to Universal Coverage is "corrupt," and a "stooge for big insurance."

So, are we clear on that now?

But there are several paths to universal health care coverage. Single-payer can be one of them — but it isn’t the only one. Indeed, many countries have reached the goal using methodologies other than single-payer, including varying blends of public and private coverage.

Too many progressives and others fail to distinguish between “universal coverage” and “single-payer.” The terms are used interchangeably in private conversations and in the national arena.

As we consider the most effective strategy for achieving universal coverage, progressives should keep two admonitions in mind. First, we must not conflate our foremost health care goal (universal coverage) with competing pathways toward achieving that goal. Second, recognizing that our differences are about strategy and not final goals, the dialogue should be undertaken with mutual respect.

https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/9/8/16271888/health-care-single-payer-aca-democratic-agenda

Medicare-for-All is really smart politics. Medicare is not only popular, it’s also familiar. Many of us have parents or grandparents who are enrolled in the program. And polls show that a significant majority of Americans now believe that it’s the government’s “responsibility to provide health coverage for all.”

But from a policy standpoint, Medicare-for-All is probably the hardest way to get there. In fact, a number of experts who tout the benefits of single-payer systems say that the Medicare-for-All proposals currently on the table may be virtually impossible to enact. The timing alone would cause serious shocks to the system. Conyers’s House bill would move almost everyone in the country into Medicare within a single year. We don’t know exactly what Bernie Sanders will propose in the Senate, but his 2013 “American Health Security Act” had a two-year transition period. Radically restructuring a sixth of the economy in such short order would be like trying to stop a cruise ship on a dime.

Harold Pollack, a University of Chicago public-health researcher and liberal advocate for universal coverage, says, “There has not yet been a detailed single-payer bill that’s laid out the transitional issues about how to get from here to there. We’ve never actually seen that. Even if you believe everything people say about the cost savings that would result, there are still so many detailed questions about how we should finance this, how we can deal with the shock to the system, and so on.”

https://www.thenation.com/article/medicare-for-all-isnt-the-solution-for-universal-health-care/

BTW - the space race was part of the Cold War effort to get to space and neutralize Soviet satellites, and JFK's moon shot speech was a way to get the public behind the spending on that program.

Believe me - if Universal Health Care coverage was in any way useful to neutralize ISIS, DT would be out giving speeches as to how it will Make America Great Again.

But hey, who knew health care could be so complicated?