Are claims that single payer health care systems are inferior to the current US hodgepodge true?

[craig]

Fine. As above, they don't profit for the same reason the average american doesn't get a cut of the profits every time Apple sells an iPhone. Or Amazon ships a product. Profits are for shareholders/investors/owners. What you are talking about is outright communism, when the owners/beneficiaries are the people. Do we want to go over why that doesn't work?

As for benefits, as noted above, the advances in treatments over the last 20-40 years is simply astounding by any metric. I can go over a hundred drugs and dozens of therapies if you want, but I won't have the typing room here.

Our country, infrastructure, and everything makes this possible and they charge us more? This is life or death health care not a phone.

 

[bave]

Our country, infrastructure, and everything makes this possible and they charge us more?

Now you can argue in the injustice of that, but what is really the solution? Play it out. The US drops our prices to that of an average price paid by other OECD nations, sounds great? Drug prices drop ~50% overnight. The problem now is that you just evaporated ~80% of the profits in the entire pharma/biotech industries. No one is going to throw a few billion into the woodchipper out of the hopes that it becomes viable. No one would risk the capital.

That is really the question you have to ask, one that every investor/business owner asks. If I give you my money, what are the potential risks and rewards of that investment and what are the likelihoods of them occurring. In this case you just chopped the rewards down by well over half. You would be far better off investing your cash in a utility company rather than Pfizer, Moderna, or any other developer.

Again, this is a true philosophy question, but there is no good answer. This is a very similar question about EU NATO nations riding on the US defense coattails. Almost all of them dramatically underfunded their militaries failing to meet their obligations and rely on the US to foot the bill and carry them. Exact same deal.

 

[Razoo]

A single payer system allows more free market competition among healthcare providers because it eliminates insurance and middle men that try to integrate vertically with healthcare providers and stifle competition.

Top 10 reasons to support single-payer on Medicare’s birthday - CitizenVox

To celebrate Medicare’s anniversary, I thought I would share my top 10 reasons, out of literally thousands of others, to support a single-payer health care system: 10. Under single-payer, say goodbye to medical bankruptcies in the United States. According to Physicians for a National Health...

citizenvox.org

 

[Razoo]

Single-Payer: Health Care for All - Public Citizen

www.citizen.org

Why single-payer?​

In a single-payer system, one entity would act as an administrator or payer. This entity would collect all health care fees and pay out all health costs, and all providers (e.g., hospitals, physicians and other practitioners) would bill one entity for their services.

Patients would have a choice over their providers, who would remain as independent as they are today. Thus the single entity would be responsible for paying for health care, but, except in unusual circumstances such as the Veterans Administration hospitals
or the Indian Health Service, would not actually deliver that care.

A single-payer system would greatly streamline administration, thereby cutting back on paperwork and allowing more money to go towards actual medical services.

In addition, improved databases would allow better monitoring of utilization patterns, allowing the identification of geographical areas in which services are over- or under-utilized.

This system has been estimated to reduce administrative services from the current 25-30 percent of the premium dollar under private insurance to approximately 5 percent.

Learn more about Single-Payer​

• Why Single-Payer?
• Support for Single-Payer
• Health Care Politics and Terminology
• Health Care Financing
• Comparative Health Systems
• Our History of Single-Payer Activism
• Report: A Road Map to ‘Single Payer’

Public Citizen Health Research Group Director, Sidney Wolfe, M.D., discussing single-payer on Public Television​

• Dr. Wolfe and Dr. Himmelstein Discuss Single-Payer with Bill Moyers (links to PBS.org)

 

[bave]

^ lol.

The idea that single payer would cause more money to flow to actual patient services hasn't come true anywhere, ever. It means less spending through more red tap, limitations, and artificially limited supply. Go ask the VA or state Medicaid programs.

 

[Loulit01]

How do we fix this?

 

[bave]

How do we fix this?

I'm not sure what your, or her, point is. A for profit corporation is doing everything it can to make a profit and reward the investors instead of running a charity? She acts as though Abbvie executives shouldn't get paid, dividends and buybacks shouldn't happen, and that the time window she selected is representative of a normal five year period.

 

[Loulit01]

I'm not sure what your, or her, point is. A for profit corporation is doing everything it can to make a profit and reward the investors instead of running a charity? She acts as though Abbvie executives shouldn't get paid, dividends and buybacks shouldn't happen, and that the time window she selected is representative of a normal five year period.

Medicare and medicaid are paying some of these hyperinflated prices. What we have are taxpayer funded pharm companies. Taxpayer money is used for stock buybacks that artificially inflate stock prices. Their justification that the money is needed for research is a lie.

That may be her point.

 

[bave]

Medicare and medicaid are paying some of these hyperinflated prices. What we have are taxpayer funded pharm companies. Taxpayer money is used for stock buybacks that artificially inflate stock prices. Their justification that the money is needed for research is a lie.

That may be her point.

It is extremely difficult to actually pinpoint what medicare and medicaid pay for drugs because of the rebate system that is behind the scenes. Either way, look at the annual reports of all the publicly traded pharma companies and realize that they run net profit margins largely in line with utilities. For instance, you look at the information in the clip you posted and you would think "wow, look at this crazy amount of profit they are making" when you see the size of the buybacks etc. What isn't explained there is that a lot of this money isn't profits, it is borrowed. Companies are borrowing money at super low rates and using it to buy back their own stock, for good reason very often. It has been extremely common globally and across all industries.

The biggest problem is that the CEO, or anyone else, isn't willing to come back and check hard with facts and stats.

For instance:

ABBV | AbbVie Inc. Annual Income Statement - WSJ

AbbVie Inc. annual income statement. View ABBV financial statements in full, including balance sheets and ratios.

www.wsj.com

The past 5 years ABBV's net income has run in the mid-high $5B annual range, one outlier at $7B because of a one time event, but generally around the 5 handle. Now, that is for a company valued at $206B as of writing this. Does it seem unreasonable to you in that context? That a business returns a 2.5% return based on the capitalization? Or that for 2020 they had a net margin of just under 10%? Do you think the bakery down the street is running a margin under 10%? How would you keep a business afloat if you didn't have at least that margin? Or, consider the fact that ABBV has an R&D expense on an annual basis that is roughly in line with their total amount of net profit, is that not enough?

I would just like someone who wants to beat on a pharma/biotech/any company to read these financials and come back with a response to this before they go after a company with a club like it is a baby seal.

 

[Loulit01]

It is extremely difficult to actually pinpoint what medicare and medicaid pay for drugs because of the rebate system that is behind the scenes. Either way, look at the annual reports of all the publicly traded pharma companies and realize that they run net profit margins largely in line with utilities. For instance, you look at the information in the clip you posted and you would think "wow, look at this crazy amount of profit they are making" when you see the size of the buybacks etc. What isn't explained there is that a lot of this money isn't profits, it is borrowed. Companies are borrowing money at super low rates and using it to buy back their own stock, for good reason very often. It has been extremely common globally and across all industries.

The biggest problem is that the CEO, or anyone else, isn't willing to come back and check hard with facts and stats.

For instance:

ABBV | AbbVie Inc. Annual Income Statement - WSJ

AbbVie Inc. annual income statement. View ABBV financial statements in full, including balance sheets and ratios.

www.wsj.com

The past 5 years ABBV's net income has run in the mid-high $5B annual range, one outlier at $7B because of a one time event, but generally around the 5 handle. Now, that is for a company valued at $206B as of writing this. Does it seem unreasonable to you in that context? That a business returns a 2.5% return based on the capitalization? Or that for 2020 they had a net margin of just under 10%? Do you think the bakery down the street is running a margin under 10%? How would you keep a business afloat if you didn't have at least that margin? Or, consider the fact that ABBV has an R&D expense on an annual basis that is roughly in line with their total amount of net profit, is that not enough?

I would just like someone who wants to beat on a pharma/biotech/any company to read these financials and come back with a response to this before they go after a company with a club like it is a baby seal.

Baby seals are innocent. Big pharm is a criminal enterprise. These companies are going to greed us into a national health care system Their runaway avarice will be their downfall.

 

[bave]

Baby seals are innocent. Big pharm is a criminal enterprise. These companies are going to greed us into a national health care system Their runaway avarice will be their downfall.

Can you respond to some of my questions? Or is this not really a conversation and just a sound bite opportunity?

I would argue that the person on Humira for the last ten years is going to disagree with you. The number of people who Humira has saved and vastly improved their quality of life is staggering.

 

[Loulit01]

Can you respond to some of my questions? Or is this not really a conversation and just a sound bite opportunity?

I would argue that the person on Humira for the last ten years is going to disagree with you. The number of people who Humira has saved and vastly improved their quality of life is staggering.

The video clearly shows what's really going on. It gives hard numbers that the CEO didn't contest once. I'm not going to answer your questions because it would be pointless. And I don't have to because we can just wait and see who's right.

Also, we can settle this very simply by stating whether we think Obama Care was an improvement in our health care policies. I think it was. If you disagree, further discussion is pointless. I'm not saying this proves one of us is right and the other wrong, it will prove neither will convince the other and we should wait and see how things pan out.

 

[bave]

The video clearly shows what's really going on. It gives hard numbers that the CEO didn't contest once. I'm not going to answer your questions because it would be pointless. And I don't have to because we can just wait and see who's right.

Also, we can settle this very simply by stating whether we think Obama Care was an improvement in our health care policies. I think it was. If you disagree, further discussion is pointless. I'm not saying this proves one of us is right and the other wrong, it will prove neither will convince the other and we should wait and see how things pan out.

CEO's don't talk back in Congress, no matter how right they are. It is akin to arguing with a cop on the side of the road. Politicians don't care if you make a point, they are just there to make a dogmatic point and hope for a sound bite. The problem is the video doesn't clearly show what is going on, it is out of context. What is in context are the cold hard numbers which I provided to you, which you refuse to even look at, review, and discuss. You have reached your conclusion, the facts be damned, right?

You want to try and deflect to ACA? I can talk all day about the economics and outcome differentials of that, but can you? No. You aren't interesting in actually debating statistics and results, you are going to vomit more of someone else's opinion that you are too intellectually feeble to defend or even craft your own views.

 

[bave]

Btw, for those that have such major issues with pharma and healthcare companies, simple solution, don't use them. Get yourself a nice basket of Crohn's then see how fast you drop to your knees begging Abbvia for Humira while you rot from the inside out. No one is forcing anyone to consume any healthcare good or service. Don't like it? Don't take it. Don't want to pay for it? Don't buy it.

 

[Loulit01]

Btw, for those that have such major issues with pharma and healthcare companies, simple solution, don't use them. Get yourself a nice basket of Crohn's then see how fast you drop to your knees begging Abbvia for Humira while you rot from the inside out. No one is forcing anyone to consume any healthcare good or service. Don't like it? Don't take it. Don't want to pay for it? Don't buy it.

Die before you criticize big pharm! You can't afford our meds anyway, you worthless cur. Let them eat herbs!

ROFL

You're ridiculous.

 

[bave]

Die before you criticize big pharm! You can't afford our meds anyway, you worthless cur. Let them eat herbs!

You're ridiculous.

So, I asked it a long while ago, what would you prefer? What do you think a fair margin is? Should pharma companies have a 0% net profit? 3%? 20%? What's the number? What should a CEO of a $200B company get paid? You have lots of reasons why things are bad and evil, but you don't have a lot of suggestions.

 

[Loulit01]

So, I asked it a long while ago, what would you prefer? What do you think a fair margin is? Should pharma companies have a 0% net profit? 3%? 20%? What's the number? What should a CEO of a $200B company get paid? You have lots of reasons why things are bad and evil, but you don't have a lot of suggestions.

Single payer health care.

 

[bave]

Single payer health care.

Ok. A few follow ups.

1) By single payor I assume you mean that in the literal definition, meaning there is only state sponsored and provided healthcare, correct? ie: Canada
2) What limits would you have any limitations on covered services? Or do you envision a plan like the US currently has in terms of accessibility and availability, just paid for at the national level?
3) What do you think reimbursements should be changed to in an effort to accommodate this? As a percentage of current medicare reimbursement is fine.
4) Would it only be provided to citizens? People with visas and residency status? Visitors? Illegals?
5) How would you pay for it? What would the taxes be? On whom?
6) How would to continue to promote advances in therapies and care?
7) How would you handle liability torts?

Edit: Please respond to my initial questions from my previous post as well. Thanks.

That's a few easy questions.

 

[Loulit01]

Ok. A few follow ups.

1) By single payor I assume you mean that in the literal definition, meaning there is only state sponsored and provided healthcare, correct? ie: Canada
2) What limits would you have any limitations on covered services? Or do you envision a plan like the US currently has in terms of accessibility and availability, just paid for at the national level?
3) What do you think reimbursements should be changed to in an effort to accommodate this? As a percentage of current medicare reimbursement is fine.
4) Would it only be provided to citizens? People with visas and residency status? Visitors? Illegals?
5) How would you pay for it? What would the taxes be? On whom?
6) How would to continue to promote advances in therapies and care?
7) How would you handle liability torts?

Edit: Please respond to my initial questions from my previous post as well. Thanks.

That's a few easy questions.

Single-Payer: Health Care for All - Public Citizen

www.citizen.org

 

[bave]

Single-Payer: Health Care for All - Public Citizen

www.citizen.org

So, with that I assume you are not actually looking for a discussion, but instead want to continue towing someone else's line? No thoughts of your own on the subject? Not comfortable with the subject material or nuance?

 

[Loulit01]

So, with that I assume you are not actually looking for a discussion, but instead want to continue towing someone else's line? No thoughts of your own on the subject? Not comfortable with the subject material or nuance?

I told you the discussion was pointless several posts ago.

 

[bave]

I told you the discussion was pointless several posts ago.

So, you come to a forum called "Debate Politics" where you don't want to make a case, don't have any points to make, you just copy/paste other peoples opinions, articles, and interviews without wanting to discuss possible alternatives and points of view?

This, right here, is why this country is locked up. People are so confident in a point of view that fits into their ideological framework that they are not willing to discuss it. Maybe you know the topic very well, maybe you don't. Maybe you have considered every other point of view, maybe not. However a failure to engage in a meaningful discourse forces everyone else who disagrees with you to just roll their eyes and just write you off as another ignorant ideologue.

I don't get it, if you want to do that, then just do it while you watch the news channel that best fits your bias and be done with it. Why come to a forum for discussion to do everything you can to avoid discussion?

 

[Waddy]

There are many well informed Canadians on this forum and some have experience with health care in both countries. Please let us know what you think?

I think Medicare has proven that single payer can be very efficient with low overhead costs. Of course private insurance is now doing its best to ruin it.

Actually, Medicare sucks. It doesn't cover lots of things, and there is a large co-pay depending on what the health problem is. And the drug add on plan sucks. No dental or eye care to speak of. Thank goodness we haven't had to buy one of those "tie in" plans. Up until Medicare we had an excellent union based "Cadillac" plan; it paid EVERYTHING. It was free from the union, NO monthly payment. Now it is our "Cadillac" free backup to Medicare. It pays whatever Medicare doesn't, including drugs, eye care hearing, dental. everything. Just like being on Medicaid I suppose. Except you can go to a good doctor.
So sometimes private insurance beats the hell out of "single payer".