Single VS Multi-Payer Health Insurance

The advantage of a single payer is that it provides services inexpensively with the smallest overhead costs. The advantage of a multi-payer is that you may pay more but you can customise the services that you want. There is not much of a difference in quality between (say) the US (multiplayer) and British (single payer) except for those Americans who lack good healthcare insurance.

With true, single-payer healthcare, you have $0 deductibles, $0 copays, $0 coinsurance. Medically necessary care is free on delivery, paid for through taxation.

With multi-payer healthcare, everyone is covered by one primary insurance, funded through taxation, but since it has deductibles and coinsurance, some people may choose to buy secondary coverage to pay those deductibles and coinsurance, or a portion of it and pay remaining costs themselves.

True single payer is simple, but requires substantial taxation to achieve.

With multi-payer, since the primary coverage includes everyone, it gets the same negotiating advantages of single-payer. However, since it does not pay 100% of all costs, not as much taxation is required. Meanwhile, it preserves the private health insurance industry, as they can insure people against the costs of deductibles, copays, and coinsurance.

For single payer to work in the states the government would need to assume control of hospitals and their billing departments. $65,000 to get my appendix removed is bananas. A trip to the emergency room can easily soar over $2,000 even if they don't do anything. My dad had a defibrillator / pacemaker put in and the total cost was in excess of $150,000.

In some sense, Medicare already does that. We know that they pay 80% after deductible, but they also decide what the basis is for procedures in various areas. Around here, they allow something like 100.00 for a primary care doctor's office visit. That's what they pay 80% of. Our local hospital seems to love Medicare in spite of not being compensated at their normal rate for uninsured patients.

Graham-Cassidy ACA Repeal Bill Would Cause Huge Premium Increases for People with Pre-Existing Conditions
https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/healthcare/news/2017/09/18/439091/graham-cassidy-aca-repeal-bill-cause-huge-premium-increases-people-pre-existing-conditions/

How can premiums rise when the insurance itself is providing less? More handouts to the wealthy?

This takes the care out of health...

The idea is, we all care and cover one another so others who are inflicted with health problems are able to get vital services while these services remain so if we ourselves become ill we may also partake of the services.

We all take care of each other... so a safety net is there to catch all people who fall, not just a few...

Manafort used #45 email to contact Ukrainian operative report
#45 is going down from, wait for it, emails... the irony!

RUSSIA attacked 21 states electoral systems!
~Senator Mark Warner

Multi-payer introduces market competition between plans. Plans that offer substandard service lose customers to plans that offer superior service.

The only reason single payer doesn't work is because people with a personal ax to grind obstruct it. If the rest of the nations can do it, we can also.

True. But that could be said of all the other systems too.



The rest of the nations don't do it. Plenty of nations achieve universal coverage without having a single payer system.

Medicare can also be combined with various multi-payer health insurance plans (Advantage plans, Supplemental plans, etc.) if one wishes to augment and tailor the basic Medicare coverage to one's needs. So that also introduces an element of private competition, and individual control, into the single payer system and beefs up coverage even more. I think that's the best of all possible worlds.

I have a supplemental Medicare policy, and, despite my incurring some hefty recent medical costs, I never owe anything in addition to my policy premiums, nor have I ever had a treatment denied or not covered by these policies, and physicians and hospitals are very willing to treat me. Who can complain about that?

AARP: GOP repeal could raise seniors' healthcare cost by $16K a year
https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2017/09/21/AARP-GOP-repeal-could-raise-seniors-healthcare-cost-by-16K-a-year/4431506006604/