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Why Single-Payer Health Care Saves Money
New York Times ^ | July 7, 2017 | By ROBERT H. FRANK

Posted on 07/07/2017 12:26:21 PM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer

Lingering uncertainty about the fate of the Affordable Care Act has spurred the California legislature to consider adoption of a statewide single-payer health care system.

Sometimes described as Medicare for all, single-payer is a system in which a public agency handles health care financing while the delivery of care remains largely in private hands.

Discussions of the California measure have stalled, however, in the wake of preliminary estimates pegging the cost of the program as greater than the entire state government budget. Similar cost concerns derailed single-payer proposals in Colorado and Vermont.

Voters need to understand that this cost objection is specious. That’s because, as experience in many countries has demonstrated, the total cost of providing health coverage under the single-payer approach is actually substantially lower than under the current system in the United States.

Of course, having to pay taxes is itself a mandate of a sort, but it’s one the electorate has largely come to terms with. Apart from fringe groups that denounce all taxation as theft, most people understand that our entire system would collapse if tax payments were purely voluntary.

The Affordable Care Act is an inefficient system that was adopted only because its architects believed, plausibly, that the more efficient single-payer approach would not be politically achievable in 2009. But single-payer now enjoys significantly higher support than it did then, and is actually strongly favored by voters in some states.

(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; Editorial; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: failure; socialism
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Robert H. Frank is an economics professor at the Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University.

None of these elite masterminds are on Obamacare plans.

1 posted on 07/07/2017 12:26:21 PM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
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To: Oldeconomybuyer
Why Single-Payer Health Care Saves Money

Because you only have to treat the sick libs and you can let the normal non-lib people die without care? Oh wait....where's the funding going to come from to treat the next batch of freeloaders if you let everybody that produces anything (other than whining, BS, and regulations) die??

2 posted on 07/07/2017 12:30:06 PM PDT by Still Thinking (Freedom is NOT a loophole!)
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To: Oldeconomybuyer
If you thought Obama's free health care was expensive, wait till you get a load of single payer
3 posted on 07/07/2017 12:30:13 PM PDT by rdcbn
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To: Oldeconomybuyer

Really?

Colorado, which went for Hillary, turned around and overwhelmingly rejected a single payer scheme.

No one wanted to pay the taxes to finance it.


4 posted on 07/07/2017 12:31:53 PM PDT by goldstategop ((In Memory Of A Dearly Beloved Friend Who Lives In My Heart Forever))
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To: Oldeconomybuyer

“Single payer” is code for every penny of health care expenditures passing through the sticky fingers of government.

Everything that government touches becomes astronomically expensive.


5 posted on 07/07/2017 12:36:03 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum (Some people consider government to be a necessary evil, others their personal Ponzi scheme.)
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To: Oldeconomybuyer
Why Single-Payer Health Care Saves Money

Because it lets people die.

In some case (assisted suicide), it even CAUSES people to die.

Now, that's frugality! (not)

6 posted on 07/07/2017 12:38:30 PM PDT by ChicagahAl (Stay safe out there. The Haters (TM) are dangerous. Very dangerous.)
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To: Oldeconomybuyer

Single payer healthcare is inevitable.

It works if it is limited to very basic healthcare with the option to buy a private upgrade policy for those who can afford it.

It also requires an end to crony capitalism between insurance-pharma-FDA-politicians.


7 posted on 07/07/2017 12:39:04 PM PDT by aMorePerfectUnion
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To: Oldeconomybuyer

More proof, as if we needed any, that the NYT’s only spews lies.


8 posted on 07/07/2017 12:39:25 PM PDT by ColdOne ((I miss my poochie... Tasha 2000~3/14/11~ Best Election Ever! “Laughing my #Ossoff)
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To: Oldeconomybuyer

So...if this is such a money-saving venture, why didn’t it succeed in lightly-populated, relatively affluent Vermont, and why didn’t the CA legislature run headlong into voting for it?


9 posted on 07/07/2017 12:40:53 PM PDT by ScottinVA
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To: Oldeconomybuyer
Sometimes described as Medicare for all, single-payer is a system...

So retirees will be paying for Medicare insurance, a supplemental plan for all those things Medicare doesn't cover, and for all those who can't afford their Medicare payments.

Single payer only applies to a few.

10 posted on 07/07/2017 12:43:53 PM PDT by HarleyD (Ecc 10:2 A wise man's heart inclines him to the right, but a fool's heart to the left.)
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To: Oldeconomybuyer
Why Single-Payer Health Care Saves Money

Because once you institute your death-panels, you can get rid of those 'troublesome' people who you would have to spend money on if you were to attempt to provide them care.

11 posted on 07/07/2017 12:45:57 PM PDT by Edward.Fish
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To: Oldeconomybuyer

It saves money by not providing care but it actually costs more because of the bureaucracy that decides who doesn’t get care.


12 posted on 07/07/2017 12:46:24 PM PDT by webheart (Grammar police on the scene.)
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To: ScottinVA

As the article states, “the cost of the program as greater than the entire state government budget”. So VT, CO, and CA discovered it more than DOUBLED their state budget but mastermind vermin like Bernie Sanders and the author of this NYT piece still push single-payer. Why?

Because they are either idiots, ideological Marxists, or both.


13 posted on 07/07/2017 12:46:36 PM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer (The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.)
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To: Oldeconomybuyer
Only $240.00 is paid per funeral. Any other debt, comes out of your families pocket.
14 posted on 07/07/2017 12:48:21 PM PDT by SandRat (Duty, Honor, Country.)
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To: Oldeconomybuyer

The cost is lower because all innovation stops. A third rate product is delivered and old therapies are cheaper. Great plan


15 posted on 07/07/2017 12:50:36 PM PDT by Mom MD
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To: Oldeconomybuyer
Voters need to understand that this cost objection is specious.

Specious? I understand Vermont determined that adopting this would have DOUBLED the size of the state budget.


16 posted on 07/07/2017 12:52:30 PM PDT by Buckeye McFrog
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To: Oldeconomybuyer

Re: “Why Single-Payer Health Care Saves Money”

Because half of the really sick patients die waiting for an appointment with a specialist?


17 posted on 07/07/2017 12:56:09 PM PDT by zeestephen
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To: Oldeconomybuyer

If one wants the lowest costs, one should insist that people pay for their own medical care.

Just look at your fellow Americans - many obviously overeat, etc.

To lower total costs and still have almost all people cared for, have people pay at least 10% of their costs.

Poor individuals/families could ‘pay’ through reduced future government benefits, such as SNAP cuts of 20%, higher housing shares (33%->50%), Social Security reductions of 10%, until the patient share is debited.

Governments should pay a share exceeding their average total tax rates on high income taxpayers, so governments work at lowering costs too.


18 posted on 07/07/2017 12:59:04 PM PDT by Brian Griffin
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To: ScottinVA

“So...if this is such a money-saving venture, why didn’t it succeed in lightly-populated, relatively affluent Vermont, and why didn’t the CA legislature run headlong into voting for it?”

Moochers move to the greenest welfare pastures.


19 posted on 07/07/2017 1:03:45 PM PDT by Brian Griffin
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To: Mom MD

I’m on Medicare and have a top of the line supplement policy. Had foot surgery in February last year. Woke up, got home and realized they had put a 2 inch plastic, slippery shoe on me. Have a bad back and it threw my gait off and I was hurting bad. We have tile floors and I slipped numerous times and almost fell. Was hanging onto the walls to keep from falling. I called my podiatrists office and said....why? Why would you put something like that on an older (I’m not that old lol) person? They’re dangerous. They could fall and break a hip. The answer....it’s what Medicare pays for. I sent hubby down to the office with $10 to buy a shoe I could walk in.


20 posted on 07/07/2017 1:06:15 PM PDT by sheana
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