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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u/Asherbaal 11d ago

From personal experience dealing with a health care billing department is impossible. They do nothing but send emails to each other about emails. It's not even about making money since they're not even good at that. They would improve the efficiency of healthcare if they just dug holes and filled them back up.

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u/KennyLagerins 11d ago

Believe me, insurance is the root of a lot of that problem. They’re going back and forth to see what they can find out and often run into road blocks where people don’t want to provide a solid answer one way or the other.

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u/Willing-Time7344 11d ago

I have a doctor in my family, private practice. He has multiple people on staff whose entire job is dealing with insurance companies and claims. It's expensive for him to deal with.

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u/KennyLagerins 11d ago

Yup. And they look for any possible way out of paying, which makes the whole deal even more difficult.

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u/Special-Garlic1203 11d ago

This is by design and one argument people use in favor of private healthcare actually. That Medicare/Medicaid fraud is a lot bigger and goes on for a lot longer, if only because private insurance companies will fight anything and everything under the sun just because they can,  they're certainly not waiting a few years for an audit to eventually spot an odd pattern.

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u/Notsurehowtoreact 10d ago

Amusingly, after working in a billing department with a healthcare practice, I find the most time consuming and difficult part is the excessive number of companies you have to deal with.

There's just so damn many insurers, and they all have their own systems and nuances and THAT is the most time consuming part.

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u/Dal90 11d ago

He has multiple people on staff whose entire job is dealing with insurance companies and claims.

Just one of the wonky reasons any move to a simplified system needs to be done carefully and with a lot of transitional supports in place. If you just snapped your fingers and the bureaucracy disappeared overnight (or even over a couple years) it would rival the 2008 recession except there is no bouncing back of this segment of the economy, ever. New segments of the economy need to be built out.

As much as people condemn profit-seeking insurers (who have a symbiotic relationship with non-profit and government owned hospitals that control 75% of US in-patient care -- rather than use their collective power to reign in insurers, they mutually cooperate to have a bigger pie to eat)...

Switching to a simplified billing system would impact a lot of mid-paying office jobs primarily held by women.

The main difference in how GDP is allocated between the US and Europe isn't defense or education, but rather infrastructure -- and moving dollars out of healthcare administration into infrastructure would shift those middle jobs out of female dominated workspaces to male dominated workspaces.

That's not saying there isn't good economic reasons to do it, it is saying it is a very difficult problem due to the sheer size and ripple effect of the disruption of a few million decent paying jobs.

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u/5thtimesthecharmer 10d ago

It’s more complicated than this. Especially on the pharmacy side. The market does shady things to make themselves look best on paper with certain formulary exclusions etc that make the employers rebate look sky high. Then it forces other market players to either also do shady things to look competitive, or lose market share. Source- work in pricing for an insurance carrier

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u/Weekly-Surprise-6509 10d ago

You just created two jobs in today's current standard of productivity. Well done!