r/FluentInFinance • u/The-Lucky-Investor • 11d ago

“Medicare for All” would save the U.S $5.1 Trillion over 10 years Discussion/ Debate

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/11/30/easy-pay-something-costs-less-new-study-shows-medicare-all-would-save-us-51-trillion
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496

u/Cracked_Actor 11d ago

But what about the economic rape of America by the medical industrial complex? How will we continue to feed the insatiable financial appetites of the few who have become insanely wealthy under our current “system”?

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u/abrandis 11d ago

Lol if it was only healthcare, add to that the military industrial complex ,big oil, big agriculture, bill banking sector etc.... the US economy is the seat of capitalism and maximizing profits for the capitalists , how do you propose we change that?

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u/SpiltMySoda 11d ago

Do away with insurance companies and make lobbying illegal.

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u/MyCantos 11d ago

The CEO of United Health Care (a misnomer as it is an insurance company) makes $68,500 a day. A FREAKING DAY!!!!

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u/SpiltMySoda 11d ago

I havent even crest $60000 and this man takes that home in 20 hours. Imagine going on a week vacation and you come back having been paid equal to 7 of your employees YEARLY salary. That's insane.

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u/MyCantos 11d ago

UHC was the insurance carrier when I was a union firefighter. Just getting ripped off every year. Tried to get us off city provided insurance but no avail. City wanted to hold the cost over our heads when negotiating contracts even though it would save the city money. Funny thing is a few years later Republicans passed a law that forbid unions negotiating insurance costs. Double fricking whammy. Get a 3 percent raise and the city just jacked up what we pay for insurance, so no substantial raise

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u/ridukosennin 10d ago

Clearly it’s because only way to incentivize people perform, no one would do his job for a measly $68,100 a day

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u/MyCantos 10d ago

Yep may as well flip burgers for that kind of money 😆

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u/myaltduh 9d ago

United Health is like Lockheed Martin or Exxon Mobil levels of making the world a worse place in order to make their leadership fabulously wealthy.

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u/imachainsmoker 10d ago

Shoehei Ohtani makes more cause he can hit a baseball and throw it too.

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u/MyCantos 10d ago edited 10d ago

Yeah but the difference is that people want to see Ohtani not a con CEO

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u/abrandis 11d ago

....again how can that work when human nature, greed and the wealthy folks won't just let that be...

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u/SpiltMySoda 11d ago

Human nature and greed are already accounted for in our constitution. We already have the tools to make the change we want. No one's really getting up to do it though. We all screech from our couches and then continue on our day like its the latest news fad.

The wealthy have to crumble for anything to truly change here.

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u/abrandis 11d ago

C'mon man , really accounted for in the constitution?, do you know unless your a land owner you couldn't vote back in the day, the constitution is an antiquated document that never envisioned our modern world. Sure some of its tennents are still valuable , but it's an entire different world.

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u/SpiltMySoda 11d ago

When I say 'accounted for', I mean the part where it is our shield against tyranny. Human nature and greed cause that. I never said the whole document was valid anymore, but as American citizens we have the RIGHT to strike these things down when we deem them tyrannical. BY LAW we can do it. If the law isn't on our side then the system isn't on our side.

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u/The-Hand-of-Midas 11d ago

Sure some of its tennents are still valuable , but it's an entire different world.

Listen, if you don't think the 2nd Amendment guarantees my right to own machine guns and bazookas to defend myself from tyranny, I don't know what to tell ya.

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u/abrandis 11d ago

Pretty sure you can't own bazookas... But I really don't even care about the 2nd amendment, my point is so much of our American society is different than when the founders wrote that document , that maybe we shouldn't take it to be sacrosanct and consider that our world has evolved and our governing ideals should too.

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u/The-Hand-of-Midas 11d ago

Yeah, that's what I was factiously saying.

People treat it like religion, and mostly religious people do.

You can hear it in their voices, they say "THE FOUNDING FATHERS!!!" with the same voice they say God.

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u/Z3ROWOLF1 11d ago

And those who are trying to fix things get called conspiracy theorists. We have an easy way to fix it , but people dont want to believe

You can check my profile to deduct what the solution could look like

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u/Sulleyy 11d ago

Memes and shit posts, apparently?

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u/Z3ROWOLF1 11d ago

Plenty of real research to go along with those memes.

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u/Sulleyy 11d ago

There is no shortage of online shit posters who have some theory of how the world should work

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u/Z3ROWOLF1 11d ago

Never said I knew the best way for the world to work. That's for everyone to figure out, together. I'm just trying to preach how the world ACTUALLY works. And how much of it is very illusionary or a scam. People could do one simple thing, and a new world would be born by Tuesday. But they either don't care, don't have the time or energy to care, or are victims of misinformation campaigns, which we all know are very prevalent now.

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u/Sulleyy 11d ago

No shortage of that either. My point is you have some vague ideas like the rest of us and you can't even be bothered to point out what you're talking about specifically in your sea of memes and shit posts. Some people get involved in politics or run a charity or whatever. You shit post online and for some reason take a high horse that it's easy to solve the world's problems and the reason it doesn't work is the rest of the world's problem to figure out. Nice man, real helpful lol

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u/etharper 11d ago

Unfortunately our government is too unwieldy to accomplish that. You not only have to have the President on board but a bunch of Senators and Congressmen all of whom have different ideas about what should be done. It's like wrangling cats.

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u/MyopiaToDystopia 11d ago

Ultimately, it falls on the collective apathy of the voters. We’ve resigned ourselves to living under the control of a failing government, because somehow, we’ve been convinced that a functioning government that serves its people is unobtainable.  If we all took civic duty seriously and got past the culture war nonsense, we could solve a lot of issues in a few election cycles. Of course, that’s easier said than done.

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u/ArgumentLawyer 11d ago

Right, except for the people that do get up from the couch and do something. Reach out to local Labor Union, maybe even try to start one at your own workplace. Find people that are helping improve peoples lives and help them. And if you aren't in a position to do any of those things, try to change the people in your lives' minds.

If you do get involved then you'll at least know that not everyone is just screeching from their couches.

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u/fiduciary420 10d ago

Our vile rich enemy militarized their wealth protection squads and enslaved them to right wing hate for a reason.

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u/PercyBluntz 10d ago

But like how? The representatives that can make the changes are in the pockets of the people benefiting from the system. What can you and I do to change the system?

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u/unclejoe1917 11d ago

You have to convince several million incredibly stupid, stubborn rubes that things like unions and democratic socialism contribute to a far better life for the working and middle classes. Cletus from Cousinfuck, Mississippi needs to get real with himself, drop the socialist bogeyman bullshit, admit he is never going to be a billionaire and that it's not the fault of immigrants or the gays.

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u/bolshe-viks-vaporub 11d ago

It takes someone profoundly ignorant of basic sociology to conclude that greed is "human nature".

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u/abrandis 11d ago

Ok , then explain why it keeps happening over and over in pretty much any developed society and even less developed ones..

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u/bolshe-viks-vaporub 11d ago

Why do you think psychopathy and sociopathy occur at something like 16x the rate of the general population among CEOs and top world leaders?

Capitalism incentivizes antisocial behavior.

Then those same people spread the myth the people are naturally selfish and greedy and complete fucking rubes like you believe it.

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u/misogichan 11d ago

While there are a lot of problems with the insurance industry I am not sure doing away with them is the best solution. You kind of do need insurance of some kind (e.g. without home insurance banks will just increase the mortgage cost as they will be self-insuring to take on the risk so you pay out the cost of the home insurance in higher mortgage costs but don't get the benefit of being able to file claims.  Driving when other people on the road don't have car insurance will be awful too).  

I do like the idea of the US government replacing private insurance with a public option (Medicare for all) as they will not be incentivized to pay out the minimum needed including sometimes denying valid claims because it is cheaper if x% go to court to fight them and win than if they had to pay out all of the valid claims of that type (and Medicare saves a bunch through reducing administrative bureacracy).  

But you could also see it becoming a mismanaged mess like the US flood insurance which operates at huge loss and is basically subsidizing Americans to live in places they really would choose not to be living in if they faced the true cost of living there.  The same thing happen with other types of public insurance since it divorces the cost of insurance from the cost to insure when it is run by the government to optimize voter support in the next elections.  Instead of health insurance companies running programs for things like reimbursing member's gym membership if they go a certain number of times a year you get Public healthcare approving drugs to be covered based on pharmaceutical lobbying and campaign donations.

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u/ConsequenceDesperate 10d ago

Yes I agree Medicare could reduce administrative costs instead of dealing with insurance companies. Also, besides the possibility being mismanaged I wonder what would happen with Medicare Fraud incidents. M4A is my favorite option, but it happen without its hurdles.

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u/Living_Pay_8976 11d ago

Make lobbying illegal? Have you met our politicians? They won’t. It’ll take the citizens to stop this shit.

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u/JesusSuckedOffSatan 11d ago

Plutocrats will not let you vote them out of power.

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u/CPAFinancialPlanner 11d ago

Ya getting rid of insurance is never going to happen

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u/Fresh-Possession122 11d ago

But how would 500+ people become multimillionaires while never working jobs that pay more than 200,000 a year?

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u/The_Formuler 10d ago

Campaign finance reform would help a bit. Citizens United was a travesty.

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u/jon-flop-boat 10d ago

Yeah, and who’s going to lobby for that?

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u/KenMan_ 11d ago

The insurance companies run the world. It all goes back to them.

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u/Ice_Swallow4u 11d ago

Other countries most likely, not that they haven’t tried. Would you rather China be King?

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u/abrandis 11d ago

Of course not , China , Russia, India are.much worse than the US , but maybe we should try and pattern our society off of Nordic countries or even France ,with more progressive.social programs.... The funny thing is you could still ah e a lot of fabulously wealthy folks , with a more equitable society...

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u/AyeYoTek 11d ago

maybe we should try and pattern our society off of Nordic countries or even France ,with more progressive.social programs....

We're the ones who allow them to do this. When you don't have to spend money on your military because you know the US is an ally and you're part of NATO, you have money for these things. The current war in Ukraine is a prime example. Europe can't even defend its own backyard without us.

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u/abrandis 11d ago

Bullshit, it has nothing to do with that... We spend more on the military like 7x the next largest militaries.... It's just where we decide to spend the money, any country that has nukes already has a big stick..... We were spending obscene amounts before Ukraine war....

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u/myaltduh 9d ago

This is a myth based on bad math. The US spends a bit less than 3% of its GDP in the military. Denmark spends about 1.4%. That’s less, but there’s basically no way them raising military spending to a bit over 2% breaks the back of their large social safety net, particularly because they actually spend far less per capita on healthcare than the US because their whole system isn’t stuffed to the brim with profit-seeking middlemen.

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u/Ice_Swallow4u 11d ago

You never even considered it until I brought it up.

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u/throwaway23345566654 11d ago

Healthcare is 20% of GDP, it’s way bigger than any of those other sectors.

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u/abrandis 11d ago

Yep, which is why it won't be reformed anytime soon... We probably could get down to 10-15% gdp and have better outcomes.

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u/BasketbaIIa 10d ago

That’s the wrong perspective imo. We’re talking about health care. Other sectors getting away with it is one thing. I can avoid a draft, I can unsubscribe from overpriced shit. Letting them exploit people like this is feasible long term though?

Behind the scenes the hospital execs and insurance companies work it out at everyone else’s expense.

Politicians can only pretend to care about drama for so long. More and more people are realizing maybe a general practitioner backed by WebMD isn’t worth $500 an hour.

Scratch that. I’m in and out in 4 - 20 mins tops, so multiply my $863 bill that insurance turned into $140 by whatever number you want

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u/retrohank 10d ago

One step at a time. Pick health care first so we can all be healthy and living longer to demand fixed to the rest of our broken systems.

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u/Lockhead216 11d ago

Ugh, stop doing things for the sole purpose of money

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u/abrandis 11d ago

I agree, but that's capitalism's killer feature it works well enough for the middle class that they get delluded Into thinking , see I made it why can't you.... That's the issue it's plays on our human nature and greed but it sort of does work, ton keep the illusion going......

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u/ReaganRebellion 11d ago

you forgot big green energy, big union, big bureaucracy.

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u/BouncingPig 11d ago

This will be a spicy take, but the only reason I didn’t agree with the January 6th riot at the capital was that I didn’t agree with their messaging.

If there would have been a riot/storm of the capital for the sake of forcing politicians to begin deconstructing the giant industries you just stated- I would never complain about how awful it was lol.

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u/OwOlogy_Expert 10d ago

how do you propose we change that?

I'm not allowed to advocate for violence on reddit.

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u/Time_Mongoose_ 10d ago

how do you propose we change that?

Guillotine anyone that achieves more than $5 million in wealth.

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u/abrandis 10d ago

Okay, so you don't have a real answer.... C'mon man , eat the rich doesn't work....any change has to be working from inside ..

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u/Time_Mongoose_ 10d ago

so you don't have a real answer

I said what I said.

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u/Alacritous69 10d ago

All of those other things have their issues. Still, healthcare is the only one with an entire industry built up around being a middleman without actually adding any value to the process. The health insurance companies are parasites.

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u/abrandis 10d ago

Add to that list, big pharma salespeople , healthcare recruiters, etc . There's a shit ton of middlemen who offer very little end patient value, but take big chunks of money...

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u/Training_Cut_2992 11d ago

It’s almost like the solution here is for workers of the world to unite and seize the means of production.

But meh, no wonder that idea doesn’t get play, one of the Three Stooges came up with it.