Future Doctors Rising Up for 'Medicare for All'

[eridani]

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/09/24/future-doctors-rising-medicare-all

There is an excellent model for universal health care – one that covers everyone, leads to better health outcomes, and costs taxpayers far less than the current U.S. system – implemented in dozens of countries around the world, including our next door neighbor, Canada. This model is called single-payer health care.

Implementing a single-payer system in the United States would be far from revolutionary. As part of its fragmented, multi-payer system, the U.S. also has a single-payer-like subdivision, which we call Medicare. It is efficient, cost-effective, and has stood the test of time, providing health insurance to all American seniors for the past 50 years.

By improving and expanding Medicare to cover all Americans, we can use this existing infrastructure to achieve universal coverage, better health outcomes, and better physician working conditions.

Medical students across the country have already joined the fight for universal, single-payer health care. Students for a National Health Program (SNaHP) currently has 650 members in over 40 chapters across the country. On Thursday, October 1st, SNaHP will lead over 30 universities across the country in a Medicare-for-All National Day of Action.

SNaHP will join together with members of the American Medical Student Association, WhiteCoats4BlackLives, the Latino Medical Student Association, Universities Allied for Essential Medicine, and the Pre-Health Dreamers in holding teach-ins, rallies, and candlelight vigils to remember the millions of people in our country who remain uninsured, underinsured and underserved by our current health care system.

[Recursion]

1. Very few countries have a single payer system like Canada

Can you name any others?

Most are either a government-operated system like the UK, or a public-private multi-payer system like France, or a regulated private-payer system like Germany.

[eridani]

2. Yes--Taiwan and South Korea

The reason Canada is a good model is that provinces, like states here, have a lot of autonomy that their equivalents in other countries don't.

[Recursion]

3. Yep. Three, and I think Austria and one other Pacific Rim country

I'm just saying it's a relatively rare model and there's probably a reason for that.

[polly7]

4. What would be that reason? nt.

[Recursion]

6. Well in Canada's case it required outlawing any medical services outside of the system

My guess would be that's part of it. It also is vulnerable to price increases (Canada seems to have social factors that keep that in check but not all countries do).

Also, like all social spending, it works better in more homogenous populations. Canada is 80% white, and was 90% white 20 years ago (and in the past 20 years you've started to see the Conservative party attack the health care system -- this isn't a coincidence). White Americans historically have been very fond spending that is seen as benefiting white people and very hostile to spending that is seen as benefiting minorities.

Anyways, the main difference seems to be that most countries want some cost at point of delivery for most people as a way to limit usage and control costs; Canada does not, and has used different ways to control costs. That's probably worth looking at, but my point is most of the world went a different way.

[eridani]

5. SK and Taiwan instituted their plans in the 90s

It is the plan being adopted by the countries instituting universal health care the most recently.

[mnhtnbb]

7. Future docs are not alone: PNHP (Physicians for a National Health Program)

has been around since 1987 and boasts 19,000 members, including med students and other
health care professionals. My husband--an MD--has been a member for years and years.

http://www.pnhp.org/facts/what-is-single-payer

[kelliekat44]

8. It's a great idea as soon as they figure out how to pay for it without hurting other safety net

programs.

[eridani]

9. That is pure bullshit. We pay more per capita now for health care than any other country

As Dennis Kucinich put it "We are already paying for universal health care--we just aren't getting it."