Coping with "Medicare for all"

I suspect this is a trial balloon, which in CA has a good chance of passing as is. If there’s any push back, they can drop the income tax to 17% and add a VAT and wealth tax. :roll_eyes:

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then again maybe it’s a lot of talk. We can hope

The differences between universal coverage and single-payer are more than semantic. The former includes a wide variety of public and private health insurance plans, many of which have coverage limits and patient co-pays, while the latter would provide unlimited benefits free of out-of-pocket costs, much like Great Britain’s National Health Service.

Providing universal coverage, as Newsom defines it, is doable by spending a few additional billion dollars in the state budget. Single-payer, on the other hand, would require the federal government to give the state the $200-plus billion is now spends on Californians’ health care and the state to raise taxes more than $150 billion a year.

The legislation now pending in the Assembly would create a framework but the taxes are contained in a companion constitutional amendment that would require two-thirds votes in the Legislature and voter approval.

With massive opposition from employers and much of the medical industry, chances for complete approval of the package are iffy at best and it doesn’t appear that Newsom will lift a finger to help it. He’s clearly content to settle for universal coverage.

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Well, it’s 18% at the very top, and just 3-4% added to the bottom rungs of the tax ladder. And at least in my case my total family’s health insurance premiums are more than 2x higher than our CA state income tax liability. I’d come out ahead if my taxes doubled in exchange for not having to pay for health insurance. I think almost everyone would actually come out ahead, except insurance companies and healthcare providers, probably. The biggest impact would probably be on those making > $500K/yr, or about the top 1% (as is tradition :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:).

Or everyone who might have to wait 3 months instead of 1 for specialized care, the way socialized medicine usually goes. You pay with your money or you pay with your health. And that’s not counting cost overruns, etc, which are also commonplace for implementing “free” government benefits.

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Three months ha. A uncle in Canada had to wait 15 months to wait for surgery on a brain tumor, pre covid. His wife also had to wait for over a year for her treatment/surgery I can’t remember what now. They are both dead now.

Meanwhile in the U.S. a few years ago had a ordeal getting my mother-in-law in a Medicare bed in the hospital. So Medicare would pay for the time in the hospital as type “A” rather than “B”. The Medicare beds are limited in each hospital. Also she had to be in the hospital three nights to qualify for type “A” payment. If everybody is on Medicare good luck jumping thru to hoops to qualify with limited beds and get to stay for 3+ nights. Be careful what you wish for.

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We’ve seen a handful of examples of racism in covid public health from the Biden administration, from rationing therapies to racial priories in vaccine rollout (neither with good medical justification, but in line with his many other racist polices, including his latest Supreme Court criteria). But as bad as it’s been for public health, this top public health school has vastly more racist healthcare in store for us.

The plan seeks to ensure that “all students graduate with the ability to apply social justice in their public health work.” In case there’s any ambiguity about what that means, the plan reiterates that the aim is “to require social justice and racial equity training at orientation, as part of the curriculum, and in the classroom.” The plan also includes one amusingly miswritten goal: “Racism, social justice and health equity are integrated throughout and across curricula.” One assumes that the plan’s creators meant anti -racism, though the error might be closer to the truth.

The purported racism of traditional grading… “Other habits of whiteness promoted by traditional grading practices also include an individualized, rational and controlled self, a focus on rule-governed, contractual relationships and a focus on clarity, order and control.” Consistent with the indictment of testing, the IEAP proudly notes that “the GRE requirement for all Gillings graduate programs was dropped.”

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So expensive not even CA Democrats can bring themselves to vote for it. The CA health care for all bill died.

https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/universal-health-care-bill-faces-deadline-california-82573398

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The local news said that the so-called moderate Democrats were having a hard time voting for it. Maybe this is partially due to the Virginia election?

The funding part requires 2/3 votes, which the Democrats have, and approval by voters in the 2020 election. that looked iffy because several of the far Left’s ballot propositions in the 2020 election were defeated. The voters rejected an attempt to end Proposition 13 protections for business property. They also rejected repealing the Costa-Hawkins much hated by the Left limits on rent control. They also rejected an attempt to repeal the California “equal rights” amendment.

so maybe the “moderates” decided not to put their seats on the line for something that probably would not pass.

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Who wants some affirmative action medical care?

Last year, the American Medical Association (AMA), the largest national organization representing physicians and medical students, pledged to dumpits long-held concept of meritocracy and embrace “racial justice” and “health equity.”

Critical Race Training in Education, a project founded by Cornell University law professor William Jacobson, has recently put online a new database on America’s most prestigious medical schools. The database finds that 23 of those 25 institutions maintain some form of mandatory student training or coursework related to CRT doctrines.

“The trainings can be targeted, such as a new requirement for a major or a department, or school-wide,” the website states, noting that the subjects of those trainings and coursework may be worded differently at individual schools, but usually use terms including “anti-racism,” “cultural competency,” “equity,” “implicit bias,” “DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion)” and critical race theory.

In addition, 21 of the 25 listed institutions have offered their students materials such as books, talks, and articles by Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo, two authors celebrated among proponents of CRT for their works on “anti-racism” and “white fragility.”

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Comparisons of the US vs other medical systems, costs and access.

Americans consume so much health care in large part because they need it more. Rates of heart disease and cancer are more than twice as high in the U.S. as in Europe, and the incidence of lung disease, strokes, and diabetes is 50 percent to 80 percent higher than in Europe. In 2019, 43 percent of Americans were obese, compared with 28 percent of Brits, 24 percent of Canadians, 17 percent of French, and only 5 percent of Japanese

Survival rates following cancer, heart attacks, or strokes do seem to be higher in the U.S. than in other developed nations, despite American patients’ greater comorbidities

Single-payer has succeeded in restraining total health care spending and has even achieved some forms of efficiency. Because the costliest equipment is much less widely available, it is used much more intensively where it is allowed—and reserved for the purposes where it is most effective. For instance, building a suite with a new MRI machine can cost up to $5 million. Tight restrictions on purchase of such equipment mean that in 2016 each MRI machine was used an average of 5,947 times in Canada, compared with 3,287 times in the U.S. This allowed the average cost of an MRI scan to be much lower in Canada than in the U.S.

Such systems also have downsides, however. Only 56 MRI scans per 1,000 residents were performed in Canada, compared with 121 in the U.S. As a result, the average waiting time for outpatient MRI scans in Ontario was 19 weeks—leaving patients in anxiety and pain while they remain without definitive diagnoses and their medical conditions deteriorate—and that’s if they were able to get an MRI scan at all.

Canada’s single-payer system saves funds to make routine care cheaply available by inhibiting the use of the costliest services. The nation has only half as many intensive-care beds per capita as does the U.S. Specialists can be seen only following a referral by a general practitioner, and patients then face waiting times that average four weeks for an oncologist and 21 weeks for an OB/GYN. Operating-room time is particularly tightly controlled, and so patients must wait an average of 26 weeks for neurosurgery. Such waiting lists, while often enough costly in human terms, genuinely do save taxpayers money—some patients get better while they wait, others give up trying to obtain care, and some die before their turn.

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That’s the most telling data. While awaiting a cancer surgery my surgeon called to ask for a delay in my surgery for someone who needed the surgery (more desperate) more than me.

I learned early in my visits, and subsequent residence, in Canada, that it’s not what you know, but who you know when it comes to supposed “equal” nationalized healthcare. From relatives in other countries with no-choice healthcare, I’ve learned it’s, pretty much, the same. They’re still proud of their system, but are willing to admit that it ain’t perfect.

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In NY, taxpayers will pay for Medicaid for any elderly illegals who show up there, to the tune of some $200M.

Maybe TX and FL should be shipping all their illegal immigrants to NY instead of DC.

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Unless, Fredo’s brother is in power. In that case, they’ll just get shipped to c̶e̶m̶e̶t̶e̶r̶y̶ ̶v̶i̶l̶l̶a̶g̶e̶ covid nursing homes. Thus, Fredo’s brother is saving taxpayers money.

I can hear the DNC explaining that he was a Republican when he sent people to death camps. :smile:

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Losing my religion, the UK edition

Much has changed in the last two years… For the first time in 20 years, more citizens were dissatisfied with the NHS compared with those who were satisfied.

Is it the bad service or the high cost?

With almost 6 million individuals waiting for operations, the NHS now has its largest waiting list since records began. To put that into perspective, one in ten Britons are waiting for treatment—with thousands waiting months for crucial cancer diagnoses and millions more in need of lifesaving operations.

Here’s their priorities however

looking for a gender health consultant who can help “depathologize gender diversity.” This might explain why the Walton NHS Trust in Liverpool now asks men if they’re pregnant before undergoing scans. Few, if any, people know how to depathologize gender, but for a job paying £114,000 a year, many would be willing to learn.

Let’s hope we can keep that insanity on the far side of the pond.

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CA expands Medicaid to aliens, legal or otherwise, age 50+.

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Since when is focusing on age 50+ considered an investment in our future?

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more on the UK NHS this time from someone who used to be the head there.
Edit. I wonder if people with uteri have to wait to get an abortion?

Jeremy Hunt, the former health secretary, has described how the service he led for almost six years was at times a “rogue system” suffering from a cover-up culture that failed patients and staff.

Hunt…says the NHS’s fear of transparency and honesty about avoidable deaths and mistakes is a “major structural problem” that still needs to be tackled.

In his new book, Zero: Eliminating Unnecessary Deaths in a Post-Pandemic NHS , he reveals how civil servants in the Department of Health and Social Care tried to block him from reading patients’ letters of complaint and even told him he could not send apologies to harmed families. Before he changed the NHS stance he says there were “meetings held behind my back to work out if they could dissuade me from such a thoroughly dangerous idea”.

It is one example of what Hunt calls an “omertà around avoidable deaths” within the service and a widespread fear that being open about problems would damage public confidence in the NHS.

Failed managers were often recycled into new jobs, he says, where they continued to make the same mistakes.

He says he was “shocked to his core” by the failures in care, which included 150 avoidable deaths a week in England.

Hunt also refers to the problem of lack of emergency care, with “patients who have dialled 999 waiting hours for ambulances and admission to A&E departments.” And this:

One in nine of the population in England is now on an NHS waiting list for routine surgery, a total of 6.4 million people.

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But that’s ok, as long as it’s everyone who is waiting and not just those who cant afford to pay for quicker access. It’s the standard we strive for these days.

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And this is in a country with a two tier system. If private care were outlawed, that ratio might be 1 in 7.

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It’s worse here for kids. Might be worse (as in, too easy to change genders) over there for adults. It’s just hard to tell because our news media isn’t willing to report on it like the UK’s is. And since we don’t have an NHS, their isn’t good data nationwide for what treatments/surgeries people are getting here. They now have some semi-strict standards over there for kids. There are age limits to blockers, hormones, and surgeries. Here, you can just doctor shop until you find one sufficiently woke enough to prescribe those things at younger and younger ages. Girls here that have had their healthy breasts amputated before even finishing puberty. And a boy can get his penis and testicles amputated/reconstructed into a vagina like gash here well before turning 18.

The one benefit to the waiting lists with the NHS is that hopefully some of those dysphoric folks will be more accepting of their bodies by the time their number comes up and they won’t feel like they have to mutilate themselves in order to be happy.

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