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throwway120385today at 4:01 PM3 repliesview on HN

Why wouldn't a single-payer solution work? The margin that the insurance companies take for themselves seems like a good place to start. From there it would spiral out to the third to half of time that all of the clinical staff spend just dealing with insurance issues and insurance billing.


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wqaatwttoday at 4:09 PM

There are countries in Europe which have entirely privatized healthcare systems (not even medicare/medicaid equivalents). US tried adopting some of their practices with Obamacare and even that didn’t work out. Singlepayer isn’t really necessary to have a reasonably affordable and accessible healthcare system proper regulation is.

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nradovtoday at 4:05 PM

I'm not necessarily opposed to a single-payer system but the margin that for-profit insurance companies take is a tiny fraction of overall healthcare spending. You could zero it out and it would barely move the needle. And many of the largest commercial health plans such as most Blue Cross Blue Shield Association members are non-profit. There is literally no margin.

Provider organizations spend a huge amount of effort dealing with Medicare and Medicaid, which are pretty close to being a "single-payer solution" already in many cases. From an administrative overhead perspective they aren't always easier to work with than commercial health plans. Plus they have enormous problems with fraud, waste, and abuse.

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dominotwtoday at 4:05 PM

insurance issues are provider and insurer going back and forth detrmining if doctors assessment of necessity is agreed upon.

i am not familiar with universal system. In that system if your doctor thinks something is medically necessary then thats the end of it and its gets done?

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