BERNIE WAS RIGHT - Virus testing wildly varying prices proves why we need single payer

Such discrepancies arise from a fundamental fact about the American health care system: The government does not regulate health care prices.
Two Friends in Texas Were Tested for Coronavirus. One Bill Was $199. The Other? $6,408.. NYT - June 30, 2020

Obama care fixed none of this.
On a regular basis the NYT publishes an article on the testing fiasco and points out the reason is that the government doesn't set prices which is why our medical system costs double anywhere else. Yet the articles never nake the connection to the major issue in the Democratic debates - medicare for all - single payer. By not making that connection, the NYT is making an editorial decision to bury the lede.

these differences aren’t about quality. In all likelihood, the expensive M.R.I.s and the cheap M.R.I.s are done on the same machine. Instead, they reflect different insurers’ market clout. A large insurer with many members can demand lower prices, while small insurers have less negotiating leverage.

Because health prices in the United States are so opaque, some researchers have turned to their own medical bills to understand this type of price variation. Two health researchers who gave birth at the same hospital with the same insurance compared notes afterward. They found that one received a surprise $1,600 bill while the other one didn’t.

The difference? One woman happened to give birth while an out-of-network anesthesiologist was staffing the maternity ward; the other received her epidural from an in-network provider.

BERNIE WAS RIGHT!!!!!! I want to see this the next time there is an article like this - but don't hold your breath - the Dem Party Center wants to see this continue - along with Obama care which obviously did nothing to curb this yet they defend it to the max - yes, I mean Biden.

By the way - note how the cultural left is focused on taking down statues and also buries the lede. They should be marching for medicare for all and universal income. But more of that in future posts - examining the fault lines between the cultural and economic populist left.

It is so logical to support single payer - where we can reduce costs in half - that the only thing that makes sense in terms of Dem Central resistance is the money coming in from the health industrial complex. (The same with support for defense budget - military industrial complex money to Dems.) And by the way - our own union (AFT/UFT) also oppose single payer and line up perfectly with the Dem Party- and yes, on defense spending too. They can close schools and cut budgets but the AFT/UFT will NEVER call for moving money from defense to schools.

Here''s another recent article:

Most Coronavirus Tests Cost About $100. Why Did One Cost $2,315?

How can a simple coronavirus test cost $100 in one lab and 2,200 percent more in another? It comes back to a fundamental fact about the American health care system: The government does not regulate health care prices.

This tends to have two major outcomes that health policy experts have seen before, and are seeing again with coronavirus testing.

The first is high prices over all. Most medical care in the United States costs double or triple what it would in a peer country. An appendectomy, for example, costs $3,050 in Britain and $6,710 in New Zealand, two countries that regulate health prices. In the United States, the average price is $13,020.

The second outcome is huge price variation, as each doctor’s office and hospital sets its own charges for care. One 2012 study found that hospitals in California charge between $1,529 and $182,955 for uncomplicated appendectomies.

“It’s not unheard-of that one hospital can charge 100 times the price of another for the same thing,” said Dr. Renee Hsia, a professor at the University of California, San Francisco, and an author of the appendectomy study. “There is no other market I can think of where that happens except health care.”

There is little evidence that higher prices correlate with better care. What’s different about the more expensive providers is that they’ve set higher prices for their services.

But American patients will eventually bear the costs of these expensive tests in the form of higher insurance premiums. In some cases, they are paying for additional tests, for flu and other respiratory diseases, that doctors tack onto coronavirus orders. Those charges are not exempt from co-payments and can fall into a patient’s deductible.

Those kinds of bills could make patients wary of seeking care or testing in the future, which could enable the further spread of coronavirus. In an April poll, the Kaiser Family Foundation found that most Americans were worried they wouldn’t be able to afford coronavirus testing or treatment if they needed it.

Did I say, BERNIE WAS RIGHT?

Still Fighting for Single Payer: National Nurses United Press Release

Obama can't beat me in a debate arguing single payer on health care. But he never seemed interested in trying.

In my blog last night (Why Is Being Mandated to Pay Auto Insurance Not a Tax?) I mentioned that I had 2 debates in the gym with anti-Obamacare(ites) (one of them a para in the UFT) and left them thinking. In fact just about anytime I have this debate I feel points in favor of single payer win out. [Check out this web site for the full SP case].

So people on the left are pissed at Obama for not using his bully pulpit to argue more strongly the benefits of SP, instead using his pulpit to go after teachers. How ironic that the US ranks 37th in the world in health care but all we hear from Obama/Duncan is how low we supposedly rank in education.

I do understand the political realities -- as expressed in the NY Times Week Review section yesterday by Ross Douthat arguing that Obama had to make deals with the insurance and drug industries to keep them from throwing their power against Obamacare -- and it worked. Both got their pound of flesh. Douthat argued that both FDR and LBJ did the same thing.

I beg to differ. Yes, LBJ and FDR ultimately did deals but they did use their bully pulpit to argue the strong case and then used that as a starting point rather than surrendering at the first sight of opposition. Obama could have made powerful arguments (certainly more than me) for single payer and then offer compromises off that.

And where are the unions on this? Here, National Nurses United makes a strong statement for single payer and calls on labor to keep up the fight. Don't forget that the long-term effects of Obamacare will reduce the Cadillac plans many union members have to dust and reduce medicare too. So as you will read below, the fight is just beginning.

Court Ruling Does Not End Healthcare Crisis Or the Need to Continue the
Campaign for Reform

The Supreme Court decision should not be seen as the end of the efforts by health care activists for a permanent fix of our broken healthcare system, said the nation’s largest union and professional association of registered nurses today.

To achieve that end, the 175,000-member National Nurses United pledged to step up a campaign for a reform that is not based on extending the grip of a failed private insurance system, but “on a universal program based on patient need, not on profits or ability to pay. That’s Medicare for all,” said NNU Co-President Jean Ross, RN. “It is not time to stop, but a reminder to begin that effort anew.”

“Nurses experience the crisis our patients continue to endure every day. That’s the reason we will continue to work for reform that is universal, that doesn’t bankrupt families or leave patients in the often cruel hands of merciless insurance companies,” said NNU Co-president Karen Higgins, RN. Stepping up the fight for Medicare for all is even more critical in the
midst of the still persistent economic crisis,” added NNU Co-president Deborah Burger, RN, noting that nurses have seen broad declines in health status among patients related to loss of jobs, homes, and health coverage. NNU has been holding free health screenings and hosting town halls on the ongoing healthcare crisis over the past two weeks – and hearing daily
reminders of the ongoing plight of many patients.

In addition, NNU will be joining with Michael Moore to host a national town hall later this summer. “The continuing fiscal crisis at all levels of government and the anemic economic recovery remind us that rising healthcare costs and shifting costs to workers burden our society, cause much of these fiscal problems, and limit the opportunities for working people. Only real cost control through a national health program can solve this crisis. Improved Medicare meets that challenge,” said Ross.

“Medicare is far more effective than the broken private system in controlling costs and the waste that goes to insurance paperwork and profits, and it is universally popular, even among those who bitterly opposed the Obama law,” said Higgins. “Let’s open it up to everyone, no one should have to wait to be 65 to be guaranteed healthcare.”

The Affordable Care Act still leaves some 27 million people without health coverage, does little to constrain rising out of pocket health care costs, or to stop the all too routine denials of needed medical care by insurance companies because they don’t want to pay for it.
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Excerpts from Paul Krugman's "The Real Winners"
New York Times
Published: June 28, 2012

So the law that the Supreme Court upheld is an act of human decency that is also fiscally responsible. It’s not perfect, by a long shot — it is, after all, originally a Republican plan, devised long ago as a way to forestall the obvious alternative of extending _Medicare_
(http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/health/diseasesconditionsandhealthtopics/medicare/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier) to cover everyone. As a result, it’s an awkward hybrid
of public and private insurance that isn’t the way anyone would have designed a system from scratch. And there will be a long struggle to make it better, just as there was for _Social Security_
(http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/s/social_security_us/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier) . (Bring back the public option!) But it’s still a big step
toward a better — and by that I mean morally better — society.

The full Krugman piece is here.
* * * * *

LABOR CAMPAIGN FOR SINGLE PAYER HEALTHCARE STATEMENT ON SUPREME COURT RULING'

Excerpts
(reprinted from Campaign's website)

The jury is still out on what effect this decision will have on the actual healthcare that Americans will receive under the ACA as well as its effects on the long-term prospects of the fight to make healthcare a right for everyone in America. Certainly, a more sober assessment of the healthcare realities faced by most working Americans and their families would show that we are a long way from President Obama’s aspirational vision.

Coming at the end of a Supreme Court session that was especially cruel to the labor movement, it is perhaps to be expected that there would be some celebration at what was widely seen as a defeat of labor's worst enemies. But this must not detract us from the urgency to prepare for a renewed assault on employer-provided healthcare benefits.

At a recent strategy meeting of the LCSP Steering Committee and Advisory Board, we heard from union leaders from around the country who are seeing the writing on the wall. Public employee benefits are under the gun in nearly every jurisdiction. Union Benefit Funds, often the gold standard in employer-funded healthcare, are facing threats to their very survival as ACA regulations impose new mandates while new state insurance exchanges potentially draw off their youngest and healthiest participants. And the 2018
"Cadillac Tax" is beginning to look more and more like a "Chevy Tax" as continued
healthcare inflation will trigger this penalty on the hard won benefits of millions more union members than originally predicted.

What Happens Next?

The Affordable Care Act is now indisputably the law of the land. This will create new conditions and new challenges. Many millions will undoubtedly benefit from increased access to healthcare and regulation of the private insurance industry.

Many millions more will find out that the right to buy health insurance is not the same thing as the right to healthcare. States will be required to set up healthcare exchanges by 2014 and state-level innovation—including state single-payer reforms—will be barred until at least 2017 (although President Obama did re-affirm his support for efforts to move that date up to
2014).

Certain things won't change, however. Healthcare will still be treated as a commodity and a profit center rather than as a human right. Millions will continue to be denied access to basic healthcare. Costs will continue to rise two, three, even four times faster than our wages while quality deteriorates. Employer provided healthcare will continue to go the way of defined benefit pensions and healthcare fights will continue to be the biggest cause of strikes, lockouts and union busting.

The labor movement has no choice but to fight on for healthcare justice. And we in the Labor Campaign for Single Payer vow to re-dedicate ourselves to this fight to remove healthcare from the bargaining table and make it a right for everyone in America. We believe that it is labor's historic responsibility to lead this effort and we will not rest until it fulfills this mission.
* * * * *

The Price of Health Care
By ROSS DOUTHAT