Democratic Primaries
In reply to the discussion: Bernie Sanders Says Medicare for All Would Provide "Quality Care" During Pandemic [View all]The Magistrate
(96,043 posts)To the degree he has offered anything specific at all.
I expect any national program to cost something on the order of the sum total being paid now for medical care. That total could be reduced somewhat by removing insurers' profit, and by reduction in administrative costs, but against that could be set the amounts now being 'expended' on what amounts to charity care, which is greater than I expect many people appreciate, and which would be reimbursed fully under a national program.
The costs of any national program would have to be raised by taxes, in one form or another. The question is still whether these would total less than people now spend on insurance premiums. Even if the overall amount extracted by a tax is less than the total paid now in premiums, it would be true some would pay more in tax than they now pay in premiums, even though some would pay less in tax than they do in premiums.
Reducing overall costs, or slowing the increase of overall costs, would have to come in large degree through measures unlikely to be popular with people providing medical care. For if the goal is reducing overall costs, reduction in fees charged by people providing medical care would have to be reduced. This is why medical associations have long opposed 'government' health care, and I say this not as a prelude to denouncing greed, but to recognize a genuine interest. They have a sound point, and few doctors and nurses are creatures of greed.
Various schemes to defray the costs of medical school tuition, so that new doctors do not labor under a burden of debt verging on classic peonage may prove of some help in reducing fees. The most likely and saleable might be a few years of national service after graduation in exchange for the government paying off tuition costs. It might be possible to achieve some overall savings, also, by reducing duplication of facilities for some hi-tech diagnostic testing, and perhaps a sort of medical 'Glass-Seagal' restricting doctors who prescribe the tests from owning some facilities which carry them out.
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primary today, I would vote for: Joe Biden