Do you believe american's know that Medicare is a single payer system?

Yes. There was a lot of opposition to the public option by the Republicans, for exactly the reason Rockbox suggested offering it. Medicare is single-payer socialized medicine, and the seniors who currently have it love it. If everyone who wanted to could buy into Medicare, for-profit health insurance in this country would be finished, hence the right's hysteria.

 

No, it is not. Medicare still requires co-pays and deductibles and often time third party insurers to cover the remaining costs. There is not one entity paying the bills, there is you, Medicare, and a third party insurer. Unless of course you use a different definition of single-payer. Using the definition by the Physicians for a National Health Program's definition, Medicare does not qualify as a single-payer.

 

That wouldn't be necessarily true. Median rather than average would make that a much truer statement.

 

One entity does not pay the bills with medicare. Both the individual and the government do. Not that different from insurance, in which the insurance pays most of the bills and negotiates the prices.

Medicare is different than other single payer systems in that those covered pay premiums, co-pays, and deductibles. Medicare also allows for the purchase of private insurance.

 

Its different than others but that's the point. Canada's and France's single payer is very different from say the NHS in the UK. Canada allows for a lot more private operation of health care delivery than the UK which is complete state management.

Just like Medicare is different from the VA System (direct federal management of an entire health care ecosystem) which is not run the same way as Medicaid (varies by state on how it is managed). Nonetheless all of them represent the government playing a much larger role in health care payments and most importantly it represents a not-for-profit insurance provider.

 

Sure those are different, but Medicare is vastly different in that those covered on average pay for over half of their own healthcare costs. Typically single-payer systems describe systems in which the government covers all the costs, whether they be a system of paying for private medical systems, providing public health care services, or a combination of both. Generally funded 100% with taxes.

If single payer system is defined by being government run, it sure is.

If single payer is defined as there actually being a single payer, then it isn't.

 

"american's"...hurts my eyes.

 

Oh I agree. Medicare's big problem is that it is stuck ensuring a group of people (the elderly) that use disproportionate amounts of health care services. A 100% government funded program would be a nightmare funding wise unless the government really starts managing what care the elderly can and cannot have. (which no one would ever tolerate)

The closest thing to a true single payer in the US is the VA System and that's 100% government management of everything including payments and health care delivery. But I think something along the lines of what Canada does with its single payer is a reasonable expectation of how a single payer system could look like in the US. Canada's system is also largely managed at the provincial level which would fit with our obsession for local control.

 

But the misuse of the apostrophe is very American.

 

I'd be curious to what would happen if Medicare was opened to the public. A government run non-profit insurance option for everyone.

If we go single payer, it will definitely be similar to Canada.

 

My late mother had supplemental insurance. It was inexpensive and covered what Medicare didn't. A good friend of mine, a Texan living the last 30 years in British Columbia, buys supplemental insurance. In his case (and this is Socialist Canada!!!), a big reason for it is coverage when he's traveling outside of Canada. He's a dual citizen now, except that he could run for President, if he wished. ;-)-

 

To me, Medicare for all is inevitable at some point. Medicare is like a permanent government funded high-risk pool. We're paying out the wazoo to provide health care to a population that insurance companies dont want to touch but we aren't balancing it with young people who consume very little health care.

Medicare has done a great job with what it has but people are living longer and that extended life span means more and more health care utilization per person. The math isn't there in the long run unless we expand the pool to balance that.

Canada's health insurance system actually started as a state level project in Saskatchewan. Saskatchewan was the first province to try a single payer system. Fortunately, we now have a state that is also about to try the same thing in the next few years (Vermont) and we'll see how they do. If Vermont successfully proves that a single payer works, you'll see a spillover into other Northeastern states and if the federal government cooperates and encourages this experimentation, we'll see genuine movement in the direction of a single payer. The hardest part is getting the first state to try it and we are now on that road.

 

Democrats roundly pilloried it as well, and Obama was making back-room deals to kill it even while he was still trumpeting it to the media.

It has nothing to do with demopublicans, and everything to do with the only real power-brokers: the lobbyists holding the cash.

 

Money talks in politics, sadly.

 

I really like the Israeli model. The current model has only been around since 1995 -- it's way better than NHS. So much so that most Israelis I know in the UK come home to see doctors for anything serious.

You have four government run HMOs that compete with each other, participation is mandatory, and comes from a tax. A modest fee can upgrade to things like private hospitals. Common medications are subsidized to make them affordable. It's run surprisingly well...you can even get an app for a smartphone to make an appointment with any kind of doctor you want. Unless you live in the middle of nowhere it will usually give you an appointment with a doctor in your area and in your plan within a few hours. Contrast that to the enormous amount of money I and my employer spent on insurance in California (Pacificare) and it often took weeks to see a doctor and I still had to pay an expensive co-pay, and any bill I got would always be wrong, overcharge me and be disputed.

In the end, the costs of healthcare are so low, what you pay out of pocket as a foreigner is often less what you'd pay in the US WITH insurance for a lot of procedures.

 

its easy to be an idealest on a message board. obama has to actually govern

 

Dont give Obama and the Democrats excuses. They completely botched health care reform. I think he gets too much criticism but I'm sorry, health care reform was such a failure.

The Public option was polling above 75% at one point. Republicans made a concerted effort to demolish that popularity with a bunch of nonsense and Democrats did nothing to counter that. They just chose to settle for a weak option.

And really the problem is that Obama delegated the entire thing to Congress. And that resulted in a complete free for all and a general lack of direction. It empowered legislators on individual committees to throw their weight around in wildly disorganized ways. And many of those committees were headed by moderate Democrats from conservative states who proceeded to torpedo a single payer or public option when Republicans made their big PR push to tank public opinion.

That was bad leadership all around. Obama should have led on the issue and Pelosi/Reid were equally bad at providing any direction. Just terrible leadership all around. The result was an "ok" bill that was no where near what it should have been.

 

lol true. And the lamest excuse ever.

 

BUT BUT BUT that is socialism or worse, it is communism!

 

Of course, I see my taxes go in but don't come out.