“Nearly 18 percent of America’s economy is devoted to spending on health care, far more than the share in any comparable country. And although the U.S. medical system provides some of the best health care in the world, it does so only for those who can afford it. Moreover, fragmented service delivery undercuts overall quality. A decade after passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), health care spending is still eating up government and household budgets, nearly 28 million Americans remain uninsured, and costs continue bounding upward.”
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“Too many of today’s policy “solutions” build upon the faulty insurance company model that currently organizes U.S. health care—a model that was concocted by the American Medical Association (AMA) in the 1930s as a way to protect the professional status and earning power of its members. It resulted in care that is expensive, bureaucratic, and frustrating for both patients and caregivers.”
““The four leading candidates would all spend money to expand coverage and they would all raise taxes to help cover the costs,” Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget senior vice president Marc Goldwein said in an interview Friday. “We estimate only one candidate would actually raise enough to assure their plan doesn’t add to the national debt.”
With the higher price tags come lower out-of-pocket costs for millions of Americans under the Warren and Sanders plans.”
“Sanders’ Medicare for All bill calls for no copays and no premiums and effectively outlaws private insurance as we know it. It is substantially more generous than Taiwan’s system, which means it would be substantially more expensive.”
“In the Netherlands, people who don’t sign up for their universal private coverage during the annual enrollment period are automatically enrolled in a plan and have to pay a premium 20 percent higher than what they would have paid if they signed up voluntarily. The Dutch have achieved 99 percent coverage under such a system, which shares other features with Obamacare (like subsidies and the ban on preexisting conditions).”