Doctors call for single-payer healthcare to improve on Obamacare

[deminks]

http://www.upi.com/Health_News/2016/05/06/Doctors-call-for-single-payer-healthcare-to-improve-on-Obamacare/2531462538608/

CHICAGO, May 6 (UPI) -- More than 2,000 doctors are calling for the establishment of a single-payer health insurance system, signing on to a plan they say would take healthcare non-profit and allow care to be available for everybody who needs it.

The Physicians for a National Health Program on Thursday released their plan to move to a Medicare-style system open to all American citizens, outlining it in an editorial published in the American Journal of Public Health.

The doctors make the case that a streamlined program eliminating profit motives, as well as the high premiums and deductibles that keep consumers from utilizing the care they need, would save lives immediately and a lot of money over time.

(snip)

"We can no longer afford to waste the vast resources we do on the administrative costs, executive salaries and profiteering of the private insurance system," Dr. Marcia Angell, a professor of global health and social medicine at Harvard Medical School and one of the authors of the proposal, said in a press release. "We get too little for our money. It's time to put those resources into real health care for everyone."

(end snip)

link to AJPH:

http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.2015.303157

[Lydia Leftcoast]

1. As Dennis Kucinich was fond of saying, "We're paying for a universal health system

and not getting it," thanks to the sky-high premiums and out-of-pocket costs that we have to pay.

I think we could sell a single-payer system with the following phrase: "No deductibles!"

If we look at Canada's system, we find that it differs from province to province, so that some provinces fund the whole thing out of tax revenues while others charge modest premiums that are still lower than what most Americans pay, and, I repeat, "No deductibles."

We'd have to be prepared for right-wingers spreading wild stories from British and Canadian tabloids, but the proper response would be, "They're talking about our plan when they don't even know that the British and Canadian systems are totally different."

One of the weaknesses of the ACA is its complexity and the way its nature was not revealed until it was ready to pass.

If I were masterminding passage of a single-payer system, I would set it up like this:

First, I would decide what kind of system I wanted. Expanding Medicare would be the easiest and most feasible, since the basic framework is already there, but we would also have to make it more generous. To avoid swamping the system, we would have to lower the age of eligibility gradually. Then I would summarize it in no more than five bullet points.

If I couldn't summarize the new system in five bullet points, I would know that it was too complicated.

Here's a summary of the Canadian system:

> Paid for by either tax revenues or modest premiums

> Administered by the provinces

> No deductibles or co-pays

> Providers and facilities are mostly privately owned

> People have free choice of providers

Here's a summary of the British system:

> Paid for by tax revenues

> No deductibles or co-pays

> Most providers are employed by the government's National Health Service

> There is a private option for those who prefer it, but any legal resident can always turn to the NHS

> People are supposed to register with a local doctor who acts as gatekeeper for referrals

[silvershadow]

10. Kucinich would have made a fine President, too. Thanks for bringing him up.

He would make a fine VP for Bernie, too.

[colsohlibgal]

2. For Profit Health Care Is Just Wrong And Evil

Sucking all the money from a cancer patient so some UFC exec can buy a third house on the beach....it has to end, the doctors are correct.

[scscholar]

3. And providing overcare...

to that person means someone else that could actually be helped goes without help since they're not as profitable as a cancer patient.

[awoke_in_2003]

4. Just like in Colorado

The party apparatus will gladly join with the repukes to fight it.

[Ferd Berfel]

5. Her Majesty won't like that

[SHRED]

6. We are traveling in Canada now

To a person they are shocked to find out my wife and I have averaged $1,000 per month for the last two years in health care costs.

They can't hardly believe it.

[Buddyblazon]

7. There is zero chance either Hillary or Trump will allow...

that...whomever ends up POTUS.

So single payer is, yet again, at least a decade away.

[Kall]

8. I'm sure it's all a plot

to dismantle Medicare, and to take health insurance away from "millions and millions and millions of people."

[silvershadow]

9. K&R

[HuckleB]

11. K & R!

[yurbud]

12. How about a compromise: lower the age for qualifying for Medicare by a couple of years every year

insurance premiums go up by more than some reasonable percentage.

Theoretically, the insurance companies would have a hard time saying we are killing them on purpose, but their greed would make it difficult to stay within the limit, so we would have universal healthcare within ten or so years.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

13. I like the way you think

The ACA specifically allows the insurance companies to charge people over 50 three times what they charge a comparable person under fifty, so I think they might actually fall for it.