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
21.5k Upvotes

92% Upvoted

2.6k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

10

u/IbegTWOdiffer 11d ago

Do you believe paying nurses less would somehow ease the staffing issues? The argument against a single payer system like in Canada, is valid, has always been valid, and always will be valid. Healthcare sucks in Canada. Wait times are terrible for anything other than acute care. Pay for providers is low which is why you get a lot of immigrant providers from places like India, where as in the US you get immigrant providers from places like Canada...

17

u/erydayimredditing 11d ago

Show me something supporting your claim like everyother idiots claim that Canada has longer wait times than the US. Not just that there is wait times. YOU HAVE TO SHOW THEY ARE LONGER THAN THE US. And you can't, because wait times for the non elite or wealthy are just as bad here.

This claim is tiring

3

u/Iron_Chip 10d ago

I work in US healthcare, and rural health facilitate in dire need right now. Half the doctors in our area either left or retired, and there aren’t any new physicians taking up the slack. Current new patient wait times span anywhere from 5 months to a year depending on location.

2

u/pieboytrooper 10d ago

This is only one data point but I live in Texas and everytime I need to see my GP I have to wait at least 6 weeks, if not longer. Any idea what the wait time is in Canada or Europe?

1

u/helluvabullshitter 10d ago

Sometimes there is simply no data on a subject but that does not make it false. If nearly everyone [minus redditors that use all caps sentences to “yell”] has experience with extended Canadian wait times for medical care, then it starts to no longer be anecdotal.

You are the one refuting these claim so the burden of proof is on you, if you are so confident then why not show evidence to the contrary? Seems like the easiest way to win the argument once and for all.

0

u/akmalhot 10d ago

No they are not lol

10

u/leafscitypackersfan 10d ago

Just want to chime in here real quick. I live in Canada and qas diagnosed with cancer a couple years ago and it progressed to stage 4 about 6 months ago. My Healthcare has been A+. Literally no complaints. I haven't had to pay a dime either.

I'm in multiple forums for the type of cancer that I have and probably every 4 out of 5 posts are people from the states looking for advice on how to afford drugs or pay hospital bills. It's awful. Meanwhile the only bill I ever get is for parking. I'm incredibly Thankful that I don't have to worry about finances during all this.

Healthcare Def has its issues here, very short staffed but overall it's nowhere near as bad as people make it out to be.

-1

u/IbegTWOdiffer 10d ago edited 10d ago

I lived in Canada for a couple decades, my family suffered with Canadian healthcare for serious things like strokes, cancer, heart attacks, etc... If it had been in the US, we would have filed a malpractice suit, but in Canada, just smile and wave.

EDIT: I'm glad you had a good experience and it went well for you! It went terribly for my family.

3

u/effdubbs 11d ago

I’m not sure how paying nurses LESS would ease staffing issues. Sure, there are places that cut staffing too much, but I was speaking of the issue of healthcare workers electing to leave because the working conditions suck so bad.

Nurses are paid well in some areas, but not all. The work is absolutely back breaking and soul crushing. Between admin and patients abusing nurses, the problem will only get worse. Benefits are being taken away piece by piece.

2

u/pls_bsingle 11d ago

Why is public approval higher for the Canadian healthcare system than the US healthcare system? Health outcomes are also superior in Canada.

2

u/IbegTWOdiffer 11d ago

Canadians less satisfied in their access to health care than Americans: poll

https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/canada-health-care-access-1.6574184

"there is a perception that access to health care in Canada is better than in the U.S., but that gets "turned on its ear" when you actually speak to Americans. 

U.S. citizens have a much more favourable opinion of their own health care system, with almost double the number of Americans surveyed (29 per cent) saying they are comfortable with the access they have. 

There were also far fewer U.S. respondents (13 per cent) who said they have chronic difficulty seeking medical care.  

Faced with the possibility of needing emergency care, 70 per cent of Americans felt confident they would get it in a timely fashion compared to just 37 per cent of Canadians. "

You may also want to look at cancer outcomes...

3

u/pls_bsingle 11d ago

Canadians Largely Satisfied with Healthcare System, But Eager for Increased Access

Two-Thirds (66%) Satisfied with Provincial Healthcare System, But Seven in Ten (71%) Agree System is Too Bureaucratic

https://www.ipsos.com/en-ca/news-polls/canadians-largely-satisfied-healthcare-system-eager-increased-access

^ from an actual polling company, not an online survey of 2,000+ people

2

u/IbegTWOdiffer 11d ago

Should I point out the hilarity in you citing a company that was previously owned by the market research company I cited?

2

u/pls_bsingle 11d ago

How about the proposition that 85% of Canadians are dissatisfied with access to healthcare (in a country with universal access)? Lol

1

u/Petricorde1 11d ago

You can be dissatisfied with healthcare in a universal access country you realize?

1

u/Dumeck 11d ago

Still doesn’t matter, 1,200 Americans in an online poll with vague questions isn’t a good survey. Hell we could get a bigger more accurate survey on Reddit here with an equal amount of bias. They are “satisfied with their access to care” with the article seeming to lead towards speciality care being what’s referred to. Is the survey for people who specifically have had medical care recently? What was the exact question asked? They are very vague with that. Of course the results would be skewed if you are targeting the small % of Americans who can actually comfortably go to the hospital when they have an medical issue and sweep all the people under the rug who “just deal with” medical issues until they can’t any longer. Seeing as how ALL Canadians can do this without going into crippling medical debt I’d be very skeptical that we are comparing apples to oranges with that survey.

2

u/GWsublime 10d ago

And yet Canadians have better health outcomes, live linger and pay less for healthcare. It takes longer to get your hip replaced but otherwise wait times are pretty comparable between canada and the US

0

u/IbegTWOdiffer 10d ago

"Pay less for healthcare"... Come on, can we not understand that when you pay $25,000 more in taxes and save $1,200 on Healthcare (numbers for illustration only), you aren't spending less?

I don't know why this is so hard for people to understand.

Canadians are not Americans. We are different, I am not sure why it is such a mic drop for some people to point out that completely different demographics will have different life expectancies.

Wait times are absolutely not comparable, they just aren't. Urgent care is similar, everything that requires diagnostic imagining is a fucking joke in Canada.

1

u/GWsublime 10d ago edited 10d ago

Because we (canada) notably do pay less for healthcare? https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-spending-u-s-compare-countries/#GDP%20per%20capita%20and%20health%20consumption%20spending%20per%20capita,%202022%20(U.S.%20dollars,%20PPP%20adjusted)

Wait times are very comparable unless you only look at studies conducted by right-wing think tanks https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_the_healthcare_systems_in_Canada_and_the_United_States#:~:text=Studies%20by%20the%20Commonwealth%20Fund,to%20see%20a%20specialist%2C%20vs.

Which, of course, result in better life expectancy, lower rates of infant mortality, similar health outcomes across procedures and better physical quality of life.

0

u/IbegTWOdiffer 9d ago

Ok…. If you pay $25k including healthcare and I pay $15k including healthcare, does it matter how that breaks down? Or does it just matter that I pay less? This is the most frustrating conversation… your eggs cost $5 and your milk cost $7. My eggs cost $6 and my milk costs $3. You are happy that you are paying less for eggs… 

1

u/GWsublime 9d ago

But that's not what happens? Like, yes, I pay more in tax but still less than the sum of tax and healthcare you pay? For which, I also get more than just healthcare.

0

u/IbegTWOdiffer 9d ago

The hell you do. I pay way less than I would (did) in Canada. It isn’t even close. I also get more than just healthcare…

1

u/GWsublime 8d ago

Alright, pick a tax bracket and let's do the math

1

u/IbegTWOdiffer 8d ago

Sure, let's pick the median household income in the US. Married, two kids.

1

u/GWsublime 8d ago edited 8d ago

Gotcha so that's 50k per parent CAD. At that amount you're looking at 15% federal and 5.15 in the province of Ontario in income tax, resulting in a total of 10k in tax liability. If the two kids are under the age of 7 and are in daycare that's reduced 3 000 from the provincal childcare credit and an additional federal 16 000 for a total reduction in taxable income of 19 000 which brings you down to 6.2k in tax owed.

It's surprisingly hard to get a fix on the median health insurance cost in the US but it runs between 23968 (16k CAD per parent) and 17,244 (11500 cad per parent)for a family of four. Which means health insurance, alone, forget taxes, is costing more per adult than your Canadian tax bill even before childcare credits and any other deducations.

Sources:

https://www.ehealthinsurance.com/resources/individual-and-family/average-family-health-insurance-cost#:~:text=BY%20Carly%20Plemons%20Published%20on%20June%2004%2C%202024&text=In%202023%2C%20the%20average%20cost,was%20approximately%20%2423%2C968%20per%20year.

https://hsaforamerica.com/blog/how-much-is-health-insurance-for-a-family-of-4/

https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2023/demo/p60-279.html#:~:text=Real%20median%20household%20income%20was,and%20Table%20A%2D1).

1

u/ajh1717 10d ago edited 10d ago

Yeah that nurse in Florida being paid 29/hr is the problem, not United Health, which made 23 billion last year in net profit.

We totally save money by paying middle men a shit ton of money for them to try and deny every claim a person makes while providers have to hire staff to sit on hold with them to argue over whether or not a treatment is really needed.

This one insurance company made enough money doing everything possible to not pay for treatment that you could give every nurse in the US a $5,000 raise.

That's one company's net profit. The top 3 companies have a combined revenue of almost half a trillion dollars. But sure, lets keep pretending that we would have to cut wages across the board to go to single payer

1

u/MainSailFreedom 8d ago

Having lived outside the US for extended periods of time I can assure you the US system is not great. Both Canada and France do an equal or better job.

The issue in the US is we think of Healthcare as a patient’s relationship with a hospital. The reality is that healthcare needs to be thought of in every part of society. Infrastructure, education, nutrition, labor laws, financial systems all impact health. To think about healthcare as just hospitals is a losing proposition.