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MfA will both cut deficits AND improve healthcare. The idea that MfA is too expensive is ass backwards. Like renewables now being cheaper than fossil fuels, the virtuous path is now the cheaper one. FFs and private health insurers are parasites. That should be obvious.

Uwe Reinhardt was against single-payer healthcare in the US, even tho he helped design Taiwan's SP system. Uwe believed the US was too corrupt to credibly run a SP system, which sounds too pessimistic given that we already credibly run one for seniors.

The public option got revived by the Biden camp as a counter to M4A and then completely dropped which has kind of tainted it as being the policy people pretend to support temporarily to stymie more ambitious health reforms but never actually intend to try to pass.

Looking into this.

[citation needed] Looks like you may need to listen to Paul Krugman on the subject: www.nytimes.com/2019/03/21/o...

I mean, I don't take anything about his current position to be in any way a repudiation of his 2009 views: like most liberal wonks, he supported ObamaCare in substantial part as a step in the direction of some sort of true universal health insurance

Not really, you can handle this with regulations and enforcement instead of forcing people to justify necessary care up front.

It will help spread out utilization. There’s a reason everyone gets their knees replaced at age 65.

Lmao, healthcare is so buckled in the US that people wont use it to avoid the labrynth, and yet because the entire industry is purposefully constricted, 'unneeded procedures' are some phantom worry. I swear this nation is malnourished despite thinking it eats too much and could lose 5 to 10 lbs

The USA has a uniquely terrible healthcare system with none of the purported benefits of either a free market or socialized care, perhaps the only large country in the world rich enough to make such a stupid system even halfway work (see also transportation policy).

True, banks are backed by government created dollars So we should replace bank lending with government spending to pay for healthcare

I didn't even have to change jobs to have my insurance ripped away. Been at a place for 8 years with company health insurance that covers dependents. Suddenly, they decided to stop that - effectively kicking my family off their insurance and gave me 72 hours to figure out new coverage.

Real countries that embrace private (nonprofit) health insurance cover the employer-side premiums when a worker is unemployed, require insurers to cover everything (approved by the national board), & control costs w/ all-payer bargaining. The US is behind the state of the art even here.

Krug has been taking MMT more seriously As evidenced by having Nathan Tankus on his podcast where Krug humbly admitted he doesn’t understand how our monetary system works

Employer insurance evolved from amazing (think Detroit UAW negotiated benefits in the 60s-90s) to absolute garbage (high deductible plans). A lot of retired people got those awesome union benefits and don’t realize how bad things have gotten.

On a per capita basis the US spends twice as much as its next competitor Germany. But the main driver of excess cost remains price. Not sure how to fix that.

60 million?! 1/3rd of the workforce quits or loses their job annually? That seems nuts to me but it might be a little misleading because that must include seasonal, temporary jobs, part-timers, etc. I agree with the overall point, but this portrays quite a high level of instability-seems inaccurate

This has always been the problem with covering all with a gov insurance plan and that the Medicare for All crew just ignore.

I mean Senator Rick Scott did a huge Medicare & Medicaid fraud. The whole sector is already so public that most of the scams are of public money.

Insurance cos are mostly non-profits, sort of collective buyers for employers. It's just a bad system like you say.

every year, product standardization and provider consolidation means there's less and less that private health plans can do to compete with each other - the largest cost drivers are increasingly beyond the ability of health plans to affect

Medicare and Medicaid have mechanisms for supporting rural hospitals already

I’m with @kedseconomist.com in that I’d prefer VA for all over Medicare. I was on a top of line PPO for most of my life before I switched to VA and the properly funded facility I use has consistently provided the better care m.youtube.com/watch?v=VN32...

he's always maintained that if you did it from scratch, you'd do single payer. I think the radicalization of the right has made him say fuck it to political compromises, but that's the only evolution I see.

Conscious of a liberal: Single payer requires tax payer money Hopefully today: Single payer has a deflationary bias, so no need to offset increased government spending with taxes

I don’t see Krugman as very different across time: www.nytimes.com/2005/06/13/o...

Which was his whole argument to begin with.

I'm not necessarily anti-M4A, but the numbers here don't seem to add up. If the tax subsidy is 400 billion, then that's maybe a 25% subsidy. "Paying for" seems a bit much. (My opinion on M4A is that it is probably overall good, but it will suck for a lot of well-off frequent voters)

Sure, but the fact that we have a bunch of silly layers built up over time doesn’t mean that the core function of OOP payments is moot. Perhaps as a model we can look to Medicaid, where copays are income-based.

That’s fair, but ultimately there are always tradeoffs since healthcare is a resource that has to be allocated. We have to be prepared for some of the same ire that is currently directed at insurers to now be directed at the government.

Medicare is not free, by the way.

I was trying to explain this to someone who kept insisting "but but but the AMA opposes M4A" and they just wouldn't listen to anything to interrupt their stream of industry talking points. Hopefully Krugman will be able to get through to people. Maybe even convince some bots.😄

🎯 "Do private insurers add anything positive?" NO "Or are they simply parasites, skimming off money that could have been paying for care?" YES

I think he’s been open to it for a few decades actually

A public option seems like a more interesting conversation to me than immediately replacing the entire system. Give people another choice and see what actually works.

Agree! bsky.app/profile/kati...

No, voters *think* they want deflation. No one wants actual deflation: Exhibit A: Great Depression Exhibit B: Global Financial Crisis What they want is their wages be able to afford the necessities without pain. Now, that said, with AI bullshit, it’s possible the downside risk isn’t that high.

This is correct on the balance sheet stuff but I still want to see someone tackle employment effects. I think healthcare is currently the only sector adding jobs and is basically propping up employment numbers broadly?

He has evolved a lot.

A leading member of the neoliberal commentariat class writes truth? Most unexpected. Perhaps bending to political reality. But will the neoliberal corporate Dems ever be moved? Not holding my breath.