There's no such thing as "affordable" health care without Single Payer

[Yavin4]

By definition, for profit health insurance is obligated to maximize profit which means that they're incentivized to pay out the absolute minimum on claims. . Thus, health care costs will always rise faster than the rate of inflation.

Only a large, non-profit entity (i.e. the government) has the ability to negotiate lower prices.

[manor321]

1. Yep, for-profit means they only want to cover healthy people who don't make claims

And they want to have high-priced lawyers to screw people out of coverage they've already paid for.

Single payer is the only way.

[democratisphere]

2. Agreed. Single Payer is the only way forward.

Can't have it BOTH ways.

[KPN]

3. It might be possible to have it both ways -- if, for example, a national health plan included an

truly and obviously affordable public option that individuals could opt out of provided they purchased private insurance and provided proof of this. Who in their right mind other than ultra wealthy would pay for private health insurance with a genuinely affordable public option?

[democratisphere]

4. Can't always make exceptions for the wealthiest.

One healthcare should be the same for all.

[KPN]

7. Yeah, but just saying. We can get it done without absolute universal single-payer. My opinion:

whatever it takes. But I'm not going to be happy with anything less than a nationwide, open to all, public option that doesn't involve for-profit insurance companies.

[democratisphere]

9. Agree completely!

[Thyla]

8. It works pretty well in Australia to have both

And even though wealthier citizens get taxed/surcharged slightly more for healthcare if they don't go private they are certainly entitled to contribute and use the public system instead.

And to be fair the term 'wealthier' is somewhat subjective and the costs of going private can be quite accessible.

It can get a bit complicated but you guys could do worse than adopting a similar strategy. Having a very inclusive Private option is almost essential to the sustainability of have universal healthcare for all.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_Australia

[Hoyt]

5. As long as providers are out for their best interests, and government is hesitant to make tough

decisions on utilization, there will never be affordable care.

We can try to cut out the 6 to 8% that private insurance supposedly extracts from the system, but it's still going to be "unaffordable" for most people. Don't know about you, but if my cost (rather through premiums, taxes, copays, whatever) goes from $700/month to $644/month, I'm not going to get overly excited. It helps, but not much, especially if cost is rising 5% or more per year.

We can say, yeah but we can cut payments to providers. Sure we can, but wait til those cuts hit nurses.

Medicare-for-All isn't going to save us big money, at least for a long time. There are other reasons to do it -- like it's the right thing to do -- but the rationale that we'll come out a lot better is highly questionable.

Plus, Medicare-for-All isn't going to pass for a long time. A Public Option -- Medicare if you want it -- has a lot better chance to be enacted.

[corbettkroehler]

6. Agreed - The Profit Motive Is The Core Problem

Why ANYONE finds it morally acceptable for health insurance executives to have million-dollar salaries while the poor forgo food in order to afford their prescriptions eludes me.