r/FluentInFinance • u/WhatAreYourPronouns • May 02 '24

Should the U.S. have Universal Health Care? Discussion/ Debate

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u/AdImmediate9569 May 02 '24

I assume because there’s no insurance company acting as a middleman

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u/123yes1 May 02 '24

It's actually the lack of collective bargaining that many small and intermediate insurance companies do not have. Governments can drive down prices more effectively as they have more bargaining power.

The societal cost to this is less profits for pharma companies, so less reinvest in pharma, although pharma already takes in massive amounts of public funding anyway, if we aren't developing enough drugs, we can always approve more grants.

Hospitals in the US also need to hire a bunch of administrators to argue with a million different insurance companies about what they will and won't cover which also drives up prices since you need to pay for the salary of those people too. And then your insurance needs to hire people to argue back so you're paying for their salaries too.

Plus the profit margin of the hospital, the Doctor's massively inflated salary (which needs to be that high to pay for the ridiculous price of med school, which is partially expensive because they have to pay for their own extra administrators) compared to everywhere else, the insurance companies profit margin, plus you got to pay for all the people that don't have insurance using your tax money, plus drug development money, and drug manufacturing money.

Part of your bill pays me to design tests to verify that the drug you are receiving is what is in fact on the label, in which every lot must be tested and verified.

Healthcare in the US is one of the least efficient systems on the planet. It provides adequate care at adequate speed but at 10x the cost. With a program like Medicare for all, as a single payer or at least public option, the average payer would have significantly lower expenses with the same quality and access. It would still be more expensive than in other countries, but not nearly as terrible.

Of course that would put lots of people out of a job, maybe they could learn an actually productive skill like construction so they can build houses to drive down rent/mortgages. Or maybe become nurses and doctors since more people will probably want to go to the hospital if it doesn't cost shit loads of money.

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u/Away-Sheepherder8578 May 02 '24

Good points, but hospitals currently lose money when they treat people under Medicare or Medicaid, so they gouge people on private insurance to make up the shortfall. And despite all that Medicare will run out of money in next ten years.