Since so many people are not covered in this country, chances are that the people who are covered are getting better results, and the people who are not covered are dragging down the longevity numbers for the US.
For the moment lets assume that's true.
It would seem that you could than
1 - Move to one form of universal coverage for everyone that was the equal to the average of developed nations outside the US. But than the covered people, at least many of them, would have lower quality care than they have now.
2 - Move to a baseline for universal care equal to the same average mentioned above, and have it cover almost everyone, but allow, and continue to have for a very few people, private insurance that would pay for the better results that covered Americans get now. The problem here is that if many Americans switch to a poorer national plan presumably their coverage/results would be worse. (At least worse than it would otherwise have been, even if not worse than what we have now. Technological and other changes would continue, and we might have better results than today, even if we don't have as good of results as we could have had)
3 - Move to a baseline for universal care equal to the same average mentioned above, and continue to have a very large percent of people covered by better private insurance.
OK. Its possible this could work, and make the results better overall, esp. if a lot of people still had private insurance (or paid out of pocket for better care). But it won't touch the "we pay twice as much" theme. We would pay even more than we do now.
All the newly covered people will probably cost more than they do now. Yes you might lower emergency room care, and get reduction in future costs from earlier preventive care, but the earlier and more extensive testing and preventive care will itself cost money, and in general these newly insured people will be consuming more health care.
Then for everyone else you have something similar to what we have now, so there is no reason to expect cost savings.
4 - "Gold plated" universal care. A level of coverage and care equal to the what the well insured in the US currently get. Now your probably massively increasing cost. |
