Universal health coverage could save $1T and 114k lives a year: study

It will never not be funny that whenever universal health coverage comes up, Americans will act as if it's some impossible task that wouldn't solve any problems when the rest of world seems to have sorted it out just fine.

There is already a healthcare program run by the US government and it's called Veteran Affairs. Veterans can't even access the care they need resulting in almost twice the risk of suicide.

I'll pass on mandated, outlaw-private-insurance government healthcare, thanks.

Baumol's cost disease is the simple answer. until healthcare stops improving outcomes and or we reduce labor cost will go up

There are many studies from reputable sources (one being the CBO) that say it would result in almost no savings or potentially even higher costs, just like there are many studies like this one that say there will be massive savings with no reduction in quality of care.

I support universal health care, but each side just lobs whatever data supports their position at the other without any real thought. Most people in support of a universal health care system seem to be completely unaware that the vast majority of households are happy with their current coverage (whether they should be or not isn't relevant really) and are not looking for someone who claims to know better to "improve their medical care" through a entity (the US federal government) that is generally not known for improving almost any situation it interacts with.

I personally would like to see Medicare opened up to the public as an option. It's simple, doesn't require anything of anyone who doesn't want to participate, and should be a reasonable test for the claims of cost savings. If it's truly a better option, people will move to it. If not, then the conversion will not happen.

Barring some sort of catastrophic financial or medical event, there is a 0% chance that anyone can make a radical change to the status quo.

Ok but it doesn't save the donor class anything, so it won't happen.

Who's gonna tell the doctors and nurses that they get a 50% pay cut?

I'm honestly curious how we square this with the only experimental evidence we have on cost-sharing in the US, like the Oregon Medicaid Study and the RAND study which showed no impact on mortality or really any physical health outcomes at all.

Bro nothing is free, if the goverment pays for all of us, then it is our own money being used for that, we have the most liberal tax code in the world, we spend the most in healthcare.

How many employees trapped in a job for health benefits for their families would universal health coverage free up?

Quantify the impact on productivity

I don't want it. I don't want to pay for it either. anything the fed government does is utter crap.

.....yeah

let's imagine an impossible country where somehow Democrats pull this off in 2029 and the 2030s start with actual healthcare for all and not just "insurance"

DOGE 2.0 will destroy it overnight

because somehow funding is not exempt from executive manipulation

look at what they did to ACA (and everything else)

all it takes another apathetic Congress and poof it will be gone so billionaires can get a few million off their taxes

there's absolutely no way to harden it against that

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But how can we support israel? /s

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Government provided healthcare ? NO.

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Ah yes, the claim free money would save lives!

The truth is once systems like this are implemented they change the dynamics of the study and as such could hurting lives.

As a simple example, the biggest cost to the healthcare system in the US is dialysis. Many of those folks already have health issues, and by both dialysis and for all the issues that caused the need for dialysis in the first place is a massive strain. The direct cost of dialysis is $33B annually [1], but indirectly is probably at least another doubling.

Further, the way the government has imposted monopolies in the space already has caused costs to balloon. While making it "universal" could mean the government gets control, and can limit the explosion. It can also could result in weird incentives like Canada, where they're promoting MAID.

[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8729831/

This is why it doesn't happen: politicians get bought.

"Jeffries co-sponsored Medicare for All legislation between 2013 and 2021, but in August 2026, he stated he shifted his stance and stated that he no longer supports or co-sponsors the proposal." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hakeem_Jeffries#Healthcare

Quite weird to see such a study from Yale, Yale is the heart of the capitalistic western empire, and it exists to serve the oligarchy and the capitalists. So then what gives ? perhaps the person working on this report is still an innocent person and has not yet seen the reality of his situation :)

Yeah, but how much would it cost in profits?

That's the only thing that matters in Amerika.

I wonder how many people would be on board for a program to make Medicare available for free for households making over $100,000 annually with 1-3 children.

We're talking about families that are provably not lazy or sucking up handouts: taxpaying citizens with beautiful, healthy children. The job creators and professionals driving America, securing their future and their children's future.

If the government were to focus on these first-class citizens, who knows what could be accomplished once the drag is taken off the system of the useless eaters and the welfare queens.

Come to a country with universal healthcare (England) and realise that if you work then you're paying 5x the market price for the worst healthcare imaginable. MRI scan - we don't know, one month wait, maybe two. Operation - are you going to die tomorrow with out it? No, ok then that could be years.

You need to pay rock bottom wages to doctors to make it work, so guess what all the good doctors leave for private healthcare and you end up with the dregs from the third world.