patrick.net

In New Jersey, there's a chain of physical surgery centers and they've opened 10 or 12 locations already. I've been in and out for about 16 months for various injuries. My insurance covers it, fortunately. But if you are having chronic pain and have no insurance, they'll set up a 3 month plan for you for $600. They run EPAT ultrasound to break up the scar tissue, work on you manually via massage/muscle release and have you work on specific exercises to strengthen. I've been to physical therapy 6 different times in my life. They were the best I went to and they are offering services for cash at reasonable prices.

In New York years ago, physicians tried to align themselves with each other. They formed groups of general practitioners and several specialists. They were going to offer unlimited services for a flat fee per person each year...something like $2500. The state shut down their system claiming they were running their own insurance. The reality is, the insurance company saw this as a threat and lobbied to have them shut down.

Insurance companies are the evil within the system and the sooner we stop acting like people need to be insured to obtain care, the quicker we can work these aholes out of the system. It won't happen because 50% of the population equate insurance with the ability to see a doctor.

Patrick says

Well, yes and no. We CAN afford single payer because we already spend the most in the world per person on health care, by a large amount:

What I meant is that we CANNOT afford single payer as our country exists realistically today. If we changed a bunch of foundational things like you later mention in your post, then it's more possible.

Many years ago, they built a state of the art private hospital in Pittsburg, CA in a beautiful, modern building. At that time, the State of California deemed in it's infinite wisdom that no hospital could legally operate unless they included an emergency room. The hospital never opened, it just sat idle, because they knew that the emergency room in a welfare type population would quickly bankrupt the hospital, so they abandoned it.

PrivilegedtobeWhite says

we CANNOT afford single payer as our country exists realistically today

OK, agreed.

My point there was that we already pay more per person than any country with single-payer.

MY take is that single payer could definitely be done in a way that would actually bring down costs over time.

It's too complicated for someone with as little expertise as I have in the field to realistically even speculate, but based on what I know, it seems like it could work as medicare for all, except that for people below 65, it would only cover major medical catastrophic stuff. Not even preventative care such as colonoscopys or breast cancer screening.

(note: I use the term major medical to refer to the type of care that requires a hospital stay, such as surgery. Not the preventative and maintenance care)

Then the insurance industry could compete for policies that cover all the things that this type of major medical does not, with a health care savings plans as an option, and sure listed prices for the many people that would opt for the health savings accounts. Possibly some law requiring people to put away at least $1500 per year in a health savings plan would be a good idea, since otherwise all the people that live paycheck to paycheck would have no money for preventative care.

But yes, the obstacle to medicare for all being done well is insurance industry.

IF we weren't all so divided by political ideology, and gullible to providers of propaganda, then the internet age might have been a vehicle for bringing a new political party together that could solve so many problems, including this one. But alas propaganda works, and corporations are people. So even if such a group rose up, their leaders would quickly be bought off, while massive amounts of money was spent discrediting them to the idiot masses.

You have single payer in America, it's just expensive. It can't be cheap, because of how expensive healthcare is.

Government is trying to address it through insurance, insurance is a fraction of it. When Hospital charges someone a million (yes 1M) for ICU because their kids were born pre term, that's not insurance fault. That's just how expensive it is these days. Single payer isn't going to change that.

Why can't I know in advance what things cost, why can't we have a system that promotes efficiency instead of monopoly? Costs are astronomical. Than there are social issues, like homeless and illegals who still get healthcare but that cost is passed onto everyone else, thanks Democrats for creating this homeless paradise in CA.

Patrick says

The other big problem is the daily masturbation to racial issues by the lefties who run the media. They are just going to keep stroking themselves because they love the discord it causes. They absolutely do not want national unity.

Patriotism is a threat to Multinational Corporations. it's the only force with enough legitimacy and power to oppose them.

Multinats are also playing with fire. The combination of mass immigration + support to "End Whiteness" (aka stoking Racial Tension with the bad actor always Whites) is dangerous, and the replacement regimes of Socialism and/or Islam will be far less considerate of Multinational's needs.

Quigley says

If people had some skin in the game, they’d be less likely to abuse the medical care. But then we’d need fewer surgeons and medical personnel. Can’t have that.

Mandatory Catastrophic Coverage.and mandatory MSAs is a great balance between Socialized Healthcare and the Secretive, Opaque Hospital-Insurance Bureaucratic Fake Market of today.