It is well documented how much more cost effective a Medicare for All system would be in the aggregate. But do you want to know how much money per year a Medicare for All system would personally save you? Listen to Dr. James Kahn, explain the calculator he developed to help you figure that out. Plus, we invite Dr. Fred Hyde and healthcare consultant, Kip Sullivan, back to answer the feedback you sent us on the topic of Medicare (dis)Advantage.
Dr. James Kahn is an expert in policy modeling in health care, cost-effectiveness analysis, and evidence-based medicine. He is an Emeritus Professor of Health Policy, Epidemiology, and Global Health at the University of California, San Francisco. He is also past president of the California chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program. He recently launched the Medicare for All Savings Calculator, which compares what individuals or families currently spend to what they would pay under Improved Medicare for All.
If you compare 70% of our healthcare spending to total healthcare spending in any other wealthy country around the world, we’re already spending more in public money than any other country spends in total. I like to say we’re already paying for universal healthcare, we’re just not getting it.
Dr. James Kahn
Why the American people do not wake up and demand that their members of Congress come to their town meetings back home— run by the people, where they talk all about this health care shenanigans— and send their Senators and Representatives back to Washington with instructions to support the kinds of single-payer that was illustrated in H.R.676 two years ago…HR676 is the gold standard, and it should be reintroduced in the next Congress so that people can rally around it.
Ralph Nader
Dr. Fred Hyde is a consultant to hospitals, medical schools and physicians, as well as to unions, community groups and others interested in the health of hospitals, health care facilities and organizations. Dr. Hyde is also the publisher of a daily health policy newsletter called DCMedical News.
A problem aside from the extraordinary cost of our medical care system is its complexity. I’m not surprised that your listeners have questions. I have questions, and I’ve been in the field fifty years. I teach graduate students in hospital operations and healthcare finance, and, trust me, everyone has questions when it comes to their own coverage… Complexity is itself an issue. And we live in a society where there are a good deal of middlemen who undertake to smooth over the complexity of our society, and make a buck doing so.
Dr. Fred Hyde
Kip Sullivan is a Health Care Advisor with Health Care for All Minnesota, and has written several hundred articles on health policy. He is an active member of Physicians for a National Health Program, which advocates for universal, comprehensive single-payer national health insurance.
It is impossible to give you a dollars and cents comparison of the costs of Medicare Advantage with either Medicare alone or Medicare with supplemental coverage. And the reason it’s impossible is: you don’t know what you bought from Medicare Advantage until you need it.
Kip Sullivan
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