• KevonLooney@lemm.ee
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      3 months ago

      Anyone who disagrees has never tried to pay for healthcare. Even if you have “good insurance” there’s always something stupid going on.

      Doctors have no idea how they get paid, and they pay another company to work with insurance companies. That other company is impossible to contact, so if there’s any issue the insurance company and the payment company blame each other. “Oh the insurance company rejected it incorrectly” or “the payment company coded it wrong.”

      • femtech@midwest.social
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        3 months ago

        Yea, I have 128k sitting above my head for almost a year now as the hospital and insurance talk. This was a surgery that was pre-authorized. They paid for everything else including the nursing facility I was in. The last part in the OR bill.

      • DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social
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        3 months ago

        It’s far worse than that. I work in healthcare and literally just talked with a patient who was charged more at a walk-in clinic with insurance than they would have paid without.

        Their visit would have cost them $250 without, they were billed $300 and insurance paid for another $150 on top of that. And it’s not like they pay nothing to have insurance in the first place.

        The system is fraudulent from the ground up.

  • Todd Bonzalez@lemm.ee
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    3 months ago

    But how am I supposed to keep my employees if they aren’t reliant on me for access to healthcare? What am I supposed to do, pay them more? Treat them like human beings?!

    • Asafum@feddit.nl
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      3 months ago

      I literally work with at least 3 people that are ONLY working at my job for the healthcare… One dude is 68 and gets covered in aluminum dust all day just for the fucking healthcare.

      You’re goddamn right people would not be working those absolute shit jobs if it weren’t for healthcare being tied to work.

      Bootlickers: “WeLl ThEn HoW aRe ThOsE bUsInEsSeS sUpPoSeD tO sUrViVe AfTeR!?”

      • NABDad@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        68?

        Am I missing something? Shouldn’t he already be eligible for Medicare?

        • Asafum@feddit.nl
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          3 months ago

          More than likely. I’m just going by what he told me when I asked why he wasn’t retired or planning on it. He was given a hefty inheritance so it’s not like he needs to work.

          • NABDad@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            Sounds to me like the people who turn down extra pay because it will put them in a higher tax bracket and they think they’ll make less after taxes.

    • pound_heap@lemm.ee
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      3 months ago

      Why don’t you read the article? The proposed system still has employer payments, but promises reduction of these payments which should give a good boost for businesses.

  • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
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    3 months ago

    The US government spends the most per capita for healthcare and that money is used to cover only a minority of citizens.

    People are then paying extra for private insurance over that.

    Having a governmental monopoly for healthcare is the best because the government can decide how much medications and services cost, the providers don’t have a choice since they only have one client and that client’s goal isn’t to make profit or to make sure others are making profit, its goal is to pay as little as possible.

    • StThicket@reddthat.com
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      3 months ago

      Norway has universal healthcare for everyone. Going to the ER is free. Ambulance is free. Surgery is free. Checkups and tests are heavily subsidised where we only pay a small fee (like $20). If you spend more than x-amount on fees annually, you get the fees waived for the remainder of the year.

      We have health insurances, but that will only allow you to go to private clinics with less wait times. These insurances are normally paid by employers with highly skilled workers. It’s not considered to be a necessity.

      The Norwegian healthcare isn’t cheap, and we pay around 35-40% income tax, and 25% VAT, but our income doesn’t dictate what type of services we’re allowed to get. Poverty is low, and crime rates are low.

      Socialism works.

    • ripcord@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      A minority? Howso? Does that mean most people are uninsured? Or just that the majority of insurance payments go to less than 50% of people? Or…?

      Just hadn’t heard that one before, so curious about details.

      • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
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        3 months ago

        Public healthcare insurance covers about a third of the population, the rest are either uninsured or covered by private insurance.

        • Juice@midwest.social
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          Medicare only exists to cover the most expensive patients who require the most care, so that we can support a massive private insurance industry, and to ensure that industry remains profitable.

          Anyone who denies that this system exists to explicitly elevate one class of people over another whom are exploited is living in a fantasy world

      • ripcord@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        Ah, I assumed you meant the US in general spends the most, including for public and private.

        • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
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          Let me repeat what I said.

          The US Government spends the most PER TOTAL CAPITA (that is $/330 million citizens) and that money only insures a monitory of citizens, a big chunk of the population ALSO spends money for private coverage OVER the share of their taxes that goes to pay for public coverage.

          The US government spends 12k * 330 million citizens for public health coverage to cover about a third of those citizens, in Canada it’s about 6k * 40 million citizens that we spend to cover everyone!

  • Snapz@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    Is there a study that shows how much potential profit the medical industrial complex may not realize if we made the switch? (Of course in reality, they’d still find a way to get most of “their piece”).

    Because that’s the thing holding it up. Not data-based proof points, or public opinion that universal healthcare would work, we have that and have had that.

    • LustyArgonianMana@lemmy.world
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      I’m pretty sure most corporations are holding this up, actually. They want us to be beholden to them for healthcare so it’s harder to quit. And they want us to not have easy access to Healthcare so we can’t sue them in class actions for shitty products. I am convinced the class action piece would represent trillions in losses for corporations here.

      • Snapz@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        Very good point. Military as well, need this and for-profit colleges to make the “benefits” of military service shine.

  • danc4498@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    Oh, but what about those poor middlemen that do so much working keeping prices inflated? What will they do for a living?

    • SOB_Van_Owen@lemm.ee
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      3 months ago

      Have heard folks unironically make this argument. “The insurance industry! Massive unemployment! My 401k is invested in them! I’ll be ruined!”.

      • danc4498@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        That’s not an invalid concern, but those jobs will just transition. Probably not a bad idea for a politician to address this concern since there are probably hundreds of thousands of jobs in insurance.

  • yesman@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    Medicare is a giant subsidy to private insurance companies because it removes the disabled and elderly from their rolls. And it’s also created a back-end for coding claims that the industry adopts. And even with the more expensive patients, and the burden of designing the whole system, Medicare constantly delivers more care per dollar than the private guys.

      • Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        As democrats are so fond of gloating whenever someone brings up their party’s abysmal actions during 2016, Sanders is not a member of their party.

        • oakey66@lemmy.world
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          He caucuses with the Democrats. He’s been the staunchest supporter of Biden and Harris. We don’t need to re-litigate 2016 despite the heinous shit they pulled. He is one of the only senate Democrats that supports universal healthcare. Congress has maybe 10-20.

          • Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world
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            He’s one of the only Senators who supports doing the right thing.

            Of course he’s not a member of a party.

            Which is what I asked. Which party supports m4a?

            And suddenly, when it’s convenient for Democrats, Bernie is one of them and no one should relitigate 2016.

            But when centrists want to browbeat progressives and blame them for Trump’s presidency, relitigating 2016 is perfectly fine.

  • TheFin@leminal.space
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    3 months ago

    Problem being, I’m sure politicians of all stripes have invested heavily in private insurance companies. And those so called administrative fees make it all the more lucrative.

  • DLSantini@lemmy.ml
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    Republicans don’t want this, because while they like to claim “blah blah spending this, spending that”, it’s not actually about reducing spending, it’s about punishing the poor(and a wide range of minorities, obviously). So the fact that giving MORE people access to healthcare would cost much LESS money in the end, means fuck all to them. Their only goal is maximizing the suffering of anyone who ain’t them, and convincing their base that someone else is the cause of all of their troubles.

    Democrats meanwhile, have no interest in doing this either, since most of them aren’t even remotely progressives(whether they pretend to be or not), and like the Republicans, it doesn’t do much to line their pockets. As long as they can keep everyone just fucked over enough, while pretending to support progressive policies, the can keep pointing at the Republicans as boogeymen, saying “look, see what the right wants to keep from you? Better vote for us, or you’ll get trump again. ThIs iS THe mOSt imPOrTAnt elEcTIon oF yOUr lIfe.” But as soon as you vote them in, where does all of that support for those progressive policies go? POOF Never to be spoken of again, until next election, because they didn’t ever really support such policies in the first place.

    So sure, I’m not going to go so far as to say that both sides are the same. Because clearly one side at least isn’t trying to bring back literal Nazis. But make no mistake, even if you have to vote Democrat to desperately keep MAGA out of power, the Democrats are not your friend. Democrats are not leftists. The are center right, at best. It’s just the Republicans have completely lost the plot, and ran so far to the right, that everyone else looks to be left by comparison.

  • pound_heap@lemm.ee
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    3 months ago

    The header is misleading. Read the article and the details of that research. To make it work they propose to add 3.75% sales tax on everything except necessities, wealth tax for >$1mil net worth, tax capital gains as ordinary income, and keep existing Medicare paycheck tax same and employers contributions but slightly smaller.

    It might be fairer system, and it will be more humane system for lower middle income folks who cannot afford health insurance and don’t qualify for Medicaid.

    But it’s a lot of new taxes. They say that for top 20% earners the net healthcare cost will be higher. And all the lobbying from insurance business… i just don’t see this could pass.

    • Olgratin_Magmatoe@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      We either:

      • pay $3,240,000,000,000 to the middle men/corpos/yacht funds every year

      • pay $2,930,000,000,000 to the government to provide actual service without bullshit denials of service

      The cost is overall less, but shifted to taxes, which is how basically every other country that has their shit together does it. The choice is pretty obvious for anybody even slightly paying attention.