Not really. Private health insurance would still exist alongside for the more wealthy (including nearly everyone on HN) that doesn’t want to wait a year for their public system MRI. Same thing that plays out in other countries. The U.S. already has a form of this in so-called concierge / premium providers too. Lots of profit to be made.

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intuitionist a day ago | parent | next [-]

This isn’t true of the Medicare for All Act, for what it’s worth. That would ban private insurance altogether. Personally I think that’s a bug, not a feature, but if you’re very concerned with fairness then you probably think the opposite.

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kennywinker a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Having the machine capacity to get non-urgent MRIs in hours is part of why US healthcare is so expensive. Anyway, the average (again for non-urgent MRIs) where I live in canada is 9 weeks, which is i am sure skewed due to the rural population. In the city it’s like half that.

	▲	strictnein a day ago \| parent [-]
		Yep, in the US my wife had to wait a day. She could have gotten it the same day, had her injury been a little worse. There's this idea that there are no upsides to the American system, only downsides.

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loeg a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If private health insurance was allowed, UHC would be stillborn. It only works if providers don't have better options than medicare reimbursement rates.

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no-name-here a day ago | parent | next [-]

> It only works if providers don't have better options than medicare reimbursement rates.

1. A number of other developed countries have UHC while also allowing a private system as well - what is unique about the US that other countries' existing approach couldn't work here?

2. Less importantly, in this world where everyone has medicare, but a smaller fraction have private coverage, your argument is that the existing healthcare providers would choose to give up most of their (medicare) patients? If so, why wouldn't providers choose to stop serving medicare patients under the pre-2026 system, where giving up medicare patients would be a far smaller loss than in a world where everyone has medicare?

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maxlybbert a day ago | parent [-]

> 1. A number of other developed countries have UHC while also allowing a private system as well - what is unique about the US that other countries' existing approach couldn't work here?

Mainly, expectations. I understand that UHC in European countries doesn’t cover all the things Americans assume it does.

Japan apparently keeps costs down by not using cutting-edge drugs. That’s not going to happen in the US.

The US Congress just isn’t good at keeping costs down.

> 2. ... why wouldn't providers choose to stop serving medicare patients under the pre-2026 system, where giving up medicare patients would be a far smaller loss than in a world where everyone has medicare?

They absolutely do. Many providers don’t accept Medicare. Very few providers accept Medicaid. The payments just aren’t high enough.

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no-name-here 16 hours ago | parent [-]

The US is dead last in terms of health outcomes among every developed country (despite spending far more), but you believe expectations will cause every other developed country's system to fail here? I guess your argument is that the propaganda machine pushing the idea that America's healthcare is not the worst in terms of outcomes (while also being about the most expensive), would prevent Americans from accepting no longer having the worst results and the highest costs?

> Many providers don’t accept Medicare. Very few providers accept Medicaid.

1. About the same percent accept Medicare as private insurance (85-90%, while ~70% accept Medicaid - is that "very few"?).

2. "Medicare for all" is one of the primary proposals being discussed.

3. Previous smaller expansions of government healthcare resulted in expanded provider capacity to handle them, not less, but your argument is that we'd see the opposite results from further expansion?

4. And in this new world where everyone had Medicare or similar, your argument is that providers would choose to ignore most patients, where they don't under the existing system where government-sponsored healthcare makes up a significantly smaller portion of the customer base?

5. And your argument is that if the government finds that healthcare providers contract to the point that outcomes remain the worst among every developed country, as they are today, that the government would be unwilling to make any changes (such as reimbursement rates) to address this?

	▲	SpicyLemonZest 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> The US is dead last in terms of health outcomes among every developed country (despite spending far more), but you believe expectations will cause every other developed country's system to fail here? I guess your argument is that the propaganda machine pushing the idea that America's healthcare is not the worst in terms of outcomes (while also being about the most expensive), would prevent Americans from accepting no longer having the worst results and the highest costs? The argument is that the US system has a much lower floor, which leads to the bad health outcomes, but also generates a lot of people who expect and demand more than most universal healthcare systems would give them. An Uber driver with the cheapest marketplace plan he could find would benefit greatly from any universal healthcare system; a guy with really bad ulcerative colitis (https://www.propublica.org/article/unitedhealth-healthcare-i...) would likely not be able to get a prescription for a cocktail of drugs at non-FDA-approved doses costing $2M/year.

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a-posteriori a day ago | parent | prev [-]

What are you proposing happens to providers who freely contract with patients at rates above Medicare reimbursement?

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a day ago | parent | prev [-]

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