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Americans - would you support single-payer?

Would you support a single payer system in the US?

  • Total voters
    108
Since you asked, it does appear to be the definitions used is a major factor:

Upon examination, however, the discrepancy between the U.S. and other countries appears largely due to country-to-country differences in the way infant mortality statistics are compiled. Infant mortality is defined differently in different countries, and the U.S. definition is notably broader than that of most other countries.

Infant Mortality Rate by Country 2025

Discover population, economy, health, and more with the most comprehensive global statistics at your fingertips.
worldpopulationreview.com worldpopulationreview.com

The death of a live-born child before his or her first birthday. Age at death may be further classified as neonatal or postneonatal. Neonatal deaths are those that occur before the 28th day of life; postneonatal deaths are those that occur between 28 days and 364 days of life.

Infant death - Health, United States

Health, United States provides a wide array of trends in health statistics to policymakers, public health professionals, and the public. It presents statistics in four overarching areas: health status and determinants, health care utilization, health care resources, and health expenditures and...
www.cdc.gov www.cdc.gov
 

Understood, but that is a single sector. We're talking about UHC which will not be a "perk" of taking a specific job (Military, UAW Union Worker, etc.) we are talking about eliminating those system and going to UHC.

So totally agree, that VA benefits are NOT unfair based on their (my service).

The injection is looking at the future and pointing out that with the implementation of UHC (in it's most common model) means there wouldn't be different retirement health care systems based on employer. UHC by it's very nature means everyone (working, retiree, private sector, government sector, etc.) are all in the same system.

WW
 

Isn't it better to tax unhealthy choices directly than having people forced to pay a massive health bill 20 years after they mad those unhealthy choices. Especially you have also the dumb luck factor. That some thanks to good genetics can be healthier in old age even if they made more unhealthy choices.
 

As was pointed out to me, I used "Adjusted Gross Income" in the example, which I probably shouldn't have. The intent was as an example, so I should have said Gross Income so that the UHC tax would be independent of gross. Meaning is would work like the SS/Medicare model where the tax applies regardless of whether Federal Income Tax is owed.

Hope that helps.

WW
 

OK, but I have yet to see UHC (M4A) bill which advocates an increase in the FICA ‘payroll’ tax rate(s). The sales pitch is typically that corporations and “the rich” will pay higher FIT rates to fund “free” UHC (MFA).


Again, the sales pitch used to get the electorate to support a new government policy (or program) doesn’t necessarily mean that it will actually happen. It’s like the prediction that CA’s MW increase to $20/hour would help (all?) low income workers, yet reality indicates otherwise.


California Pizza Hut franchises to lay off more than 1,100 delivery drivers ahead of wage hike

Ahead of minimum wage increases, hundreds of California Pizza Huts are cutting delivery services and laying off drivers.
www.latimes.com
 
Allan said:
Just a temperature check on how Americans feel about single-payer universal health care.
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I traditionally have been against it, but the system has been so screwed up for so long now, that I think we are left with no choice.
 

Yep, there is a saying about the road to hell…

Which to me has always been about the law of unintended consequences.

WW
 
Captain Adverse said:
I don't have an opinion one way or the other. I've rarely had need of medical assistance, mostly (IMO) because I don't have a lot of "vices" that lead to poor health.
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You don't need 'vices' to have poor health. And you can take care of your body as well as anyone and still end up with cancer or some other debilitating disease that leads to bankruptcy.
 

Maybe, but maybe not - that’s why we need to see the details of any US UHC plan (preferably in the form of a House bill). Germany, Canada and the UK each have different health care systems, yet all are said to have UHC.
 
cpwill said:
This forum is maybe not the best of gauges.
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True. It is occupied by people who know more of their stuff when it comes to politics/policy than the average American. Interestingly, the forum leans more left than the average American. But I'm sure that's just a coincidence.
 
WorldWatcher said:
Yep, there is a saying about the road to hell…

Which to me has always been about the law of unintended consequences.

WW
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Often, those consequences aren’t “unintended” (or unexpected), they’re simply not expressed (advertised?) in advance.
 
Been over this ground before.

 

That's really the crux of the problem, how to do it in a way the maximizes the number of winners and minimizes the number of losers. Those who view single-payer as coming with a magic dial we get to spin to reduce costs are in for a rude awakening, as I imagine if the question were ever called it would become apparent very quickly that the nurses unions supporting SP don't want to get busted and see their wages reduced, patients don't want to see their convenient local facility closed, people are not going to be willing to experience the capacity reductions that other cheaper systems just grin and bear, etc. We like getting fast access to cutting edge technology and treatments and it seems unlikely that we're going to be willing to give that up in the name of cost savings.

Which leads to the other part of the winners/losers conundrum: financing it. For all its faults, the bloated employer-based system has gotten a lot of middle class families used to having good access to world class care. We don't reserve access to great care just for the uber rich, we've made it part of the middle class experience. And we've done it by hiding the costs behind the employer portion of the premium. So you need to find a way to give people access to coverage that feels as good as what they have now (so, something better than traditional Medicare, which would feel like a step down to most people with employer-based coverage) without making it feel like they're paying more for it. A challenge that gets compounded if we're not really willing to pare back our system in the name of finding cost savings.

This is exactly the problem Vermont ran into a few years ago: they couldn't figure out how to design a plan and financing mechanism that didn't leave large swaths of their population feeling like they were paying more and getting less. Even if you can make the argument that on paper the opposite is true, what matters is how people experience the transition.
 
Having others pay for your annual check ups but denying others the same is what, exactly?
 
cpwill said:
those numbers are not apples to apples. The U.S., for example, counts premie deaths.

Also, having been on it, I can attest that our government-run Healthcare is qualitatively worse than our private system.
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Not gonna pry on your health care coverage, but for the record, if you have Medicare Advantage you don't have actual Medicare.
 
WorldWatcher said:
I know, I was commenting on the idea that business would convert an decreased costs to increased employee wages.
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Both excellent/important points. I think there's basically zero chance that "single-payer" in the United States would involve removing private insurers from the equation. As a practical matter, the SCOTUS is going to have an extremely rightwing majority for the foreseeable future and I don't see how they would allow that to happen. Nor is it clear the voters would allow that to happen. The majority of people in both Medicaid and Medicare right now are enrolled in private insurance plans, so it's hard to imagine that expanding access to "public" health insurance would really mean eliminating private insurers. (Somewhere above I mentioned the pile up of recent examples of bad behavior by private insurers is a good argument in favor of single-payer, which in the abstract I think it is--but in real life, I don't actually think "American single-payer" would be a solution to that problem because it wouldn't get rid of them.)

And as for converting employer health care contributions to wages, that's one where the economists will say that ought to happen in the long run and the average employee/voter is going to be justifiably skeptical. Which just underscores the point that even if you can figure out a decent financing model on paper, the politics of it are likely to be brutal beyond anything we've seen in our lifetimes.
 

IMHO, the biggest problem with UHC is that the wonderful cost savings, advertised by switching to UHC, are largely obtained simply by paying medical care providers less. That likely means the cost of educating (training?) medical care provider personnel must also become publicly funded, as is the case in many (if not most) UHC nations.
 

The cost savings argument for single-payer seems weak to me, as I think the actual immediate cost savings potential is pretty modest. The opposite line of thinking is more persuasive to me: that, barring some drastic change in the nature of what health care is, it's inevitably and unavoidably going to swell as a portion of the economy and household budgets (past 20% of GDP to 30%, 40%, 50%, who knows?) and it's just hard to picture how that's going to work down the line without a standardized, rationalized way of extracting and transferring the money for the health care system in a fair and equitable way.
 
Old 'N Chill said:
YES, absolutely! I am one of those people who very rarely even go to a doctor and am on no prescription medications, but I see the value of having Universal Healthcare in the USA and I was glad when President Obama promoted the Affordable Care Act.
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I was didapointed that Obama didn't lead with Universal Healthcare & be negotiated down to the vastly inferior ACA. At least give it a shot, so folks could have been more exposed to the concept. Bernie Sanders as the best advocate for it. There are those who feel that the sudden shift of all candidates to backing Joe Biden was basically to block Bernie & Medicare for All.
 

Why is it the citizens who are happiest with their health care are the ones who get it through a single payer/universal healthcare system?


Iceland came forward as the best with a staggering score of 93.6 on the healthcare access and quality index, reflected back into a 7.5 happiness score. Following suit is for Switzerland with a score of 91.8 and 7.6 respectively. Third place is for another Nordic country, Sweden, with a score of 90.5 and 7.4.

Global Health vs. Happiness Index | Lenstore

In our latest study, we've analysed how health correlates with happiness to reveal the importance wellbeing has on a nation's life satisfaction
www.lenstore.co.uk
 
This very much highlighting the realities as described in #287.
 
Greenbeard said:
The cost savings argument for single-payer seems weak to me, as I think the actual immediate cost savings potential is pretty modest.
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I agree, since having a single-payer DoD and MIC system managed by congress critters is, by far, the most expensive on the planet.


That’s also likely to become true for housing (combined with utility) costs, as they seem to be rising far faster than general inflation or wage increases.
 
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