Universal Healthcare and Utter Nonsense

For the past twenty seven years I have been writing on healthcare. Since the original Hillary Care plan which was cooked up in secret and then unloaded with no explanation, through Obamacare and now Socialist Medicine.

The NY Times, the 21st Century Daily Worker, has a writer who opines sans facts. It seems that facts are a burden that they cannot sustain. The author states:

Although the financing details of Medicare for All remain provisional at the moment, a RAND report on a more concrete single-payer proposal for New York State found that the plan would cut health care costs dramatically for the lowest income group, while increasing them by about 50 percent for the highest income group. Middle-class people would also experience net savings on health care equal to around 10 percent of their income, with only those earning 10 times the federal poverty line or above — that’s $134,000 for an individual or $276,000 for a family of four — paying more than they do now.

I wrote and commented on this report. It is weak at best and outright wrong at worst. It is for a New York Plan that forces everyone into the State controlled plan. Read it if you want to see what it does.

Now here are some facts.

1. Healthcare currently costs about $12,000 per person per year. Really.

2. However, 80% of the expenses are for 20% of the people.

3. And surprisingly it is not those in Medicare. They seem to just die off.

4. Those in Medicare now have paid into the system for fifty years or more. Furthermore they still pay in.

5. However, the costly Medicare patients are mostly those who are under 65 and are under Social Security because of some massive health problem. For example a 19 year old with Hodgkin's Lymphoma and no insurance and a subsequent cardiac problem needing a transplant. 

These are just a few. So for a family of 4 that would be a $48,000 bill! Every year! But 80% of these people cost near to nothing. It is the very few who have massive costs.

The problem is how do we deal with these people. Take a leukemia patient of say 10 years old. We can use CAR-T cell therapy and it costs $500,000 plus most likely another $200,000. That is about the costs for 14 people, or six and a half families.

Thus details count and simple sops like the one mentioned does no good unless and until it deals with facts.