Do the math.
Medicare or Medicaid for All really means no care for anyone.
An editorial in the morning newspaper makes that abundantly clear. Using the stats from a recent news story, the screed relates that the charge for neonatal intensive care at Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center is $14,815 per day per baby, but Medicaid, which is used by 70 percent of the families with such infants, pays only $1,487.
The CEO of Sunrise told the paper the underpayments cost the hospital $77 million this past year.
As the paper’s local political columnist points out on the cover of the opinion section, 20 percent of Nevadans are now on Medicaid. Imagine what will happened when that is increased to 100 percent?
A recent George Mason University’s Mercatus Center study found the Medicare for All plan amount to a roughly 40 percent cut across the board in payments to doctors and hospitals. With rural hospitals already going out of business, image how many more would have to close and how many doctors would retire or change professions.
About this time a year ago, the British socialized health system was forced to cancel 50,000 non-emergency surgeries due to hospital overcrowding. Emergency room waits were said to be as long as 12 hours.
Care you don’t get doesn’t cost as much.
A year ago the British government-run National Health Service abruptly canceled 50,000 nonemergency surgeries due to overcrowding at hospitals. (AP Photo)
4TH ST8 
Get ready for the inevitable “everyone else lives longer than we doo” and “they all pay tons less for it” coupled with “Australia is the perfect place for healthcare”!
Absolutely, Steve. What’s amazing is that you reject what is an outright fact. The question is why do we pay so much more than everyone else? I believe you have only the shakiest evidence that it could be because we receive such high quality care. There is far more evidence suggesting that health care in this country at the lowest income levels sucks. Try looking at neonatal deaths for a good wake up call.
Were 70 percent covered by Medicaid?
Why would anyone want to replace quality with the well documented low quality Rincon just pointed out?
Medicaid is the care source for the poor in the US, and it is what you want to make everyone use!
[…] Care you don’t get doesn’t cost as much Jan6 by Do the math. Medicare or Medicaid for All really means no care for anyone. […]
I like to think that if Australia can provide quality health care at a reasonable cost, that we can too. Apparently, you’re convinced that Americans aren’t as capable as Australians and so, you’re willing to accept good old American gouging.
BTW, do you still believe that it’s acceptable for insurers to deny coverage to those with preexisting conditions and dump or vastly increase premiums for those that acquire serious medical problems?
“do you still believe that it’s acceptable for insurers to deny coverage to those with preexisting conditions and dump or vastly increase premiums for those that acquire serious medical problems?”
Never did. Stop assuming.
Not everything in ACA was bad.
Nevertheless, you appear to be saying Medicaid is as good as the Australian healthcare system.
That is very perturbing. But it seems the Australian healthcare system is beginning to experience some of the same problems Medicaid is facing.
Thank you for agreeing that the ACA isn’t 100% bad. I agree that it’s a lousy system, but it’s better than what we had before and more importantly, it got the ball rolling so that we have a chance to continue changing our system and hopefully, improve it. Nevertheless, I’m a little disappointed that you choose to ignore the deficiencies in our own system and instead, highlight a supposed weakness in a system that continues to outperform our own.
Of course they did some good things with ACA. To paraphrase Harry Reid, who said something to the effect: we gotta get’m hooked with the good stuff before we slam’m with the crap.
Medicaid outperforms?
After all, that is the system you seem to be calling for everyone in the US to be subjected to using exclusively.
Medicaid has only a little in common with Australia’s system. For one, Australian medical charges are substantially less than they are here across the board. In addition, Australia encourages supplemental policies, which enable holders to pay for treatments deemed of marginal benefit and help them obtain faster treatment of nonemergency ailments. Another definite difference is that Australia doesn’t allow direct advertising of prescription drugs to the general public. They also purchase U.S. drugs cheaper than we can here, thanks to our industry gouging…err, protective laws, which do not allow Medicare or Medicaid to negotiate prices, and prohibit citizens from buying substantial quantities of drugs from foreign countries, especially for resale. Can someone tell me why almost every other foreign country manages to negotiate cheaper prices for U.S. drugs than our own insurance companies?
I suspect that a careful examination will yield many other substantial means by which Australia discourages price gouging.
“Medicare for all”?
https://www.thestreet.com/story/14499999/1/medicare-is-not-free-here-is-why-it-costs-so-much.html
Once prescription drugs go generic, the prices and copays come down, a lot.
And, I suspect new drugs, not yet allowed to have a generic, are not all that “available” to other countries for any substantial discount.