Fauci forecast: 100,000 - 200,000 American deaths.

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What "administrative costs" are you referring to specifically? Who is paying the costs? Are you referring to the administrative costs to administer government run healthcare programs like Medicare and Medicaid? Private corporation costs to administer group health premiums for and from their employees?

Google it.

It’s my understanding that it’s the total admin costs of healthcare USA wide vs the total admin costs of healthcare Canada wide, expressed as a per capita figure.

Americans, no matter which way you slice it, on average pay 5x as much $ for the office and paperwork administrative expenses of their healthcare as Canadians do. This is because of their hodgepodge mix of service providers, government, multiple layers of for profit health insurance companies and hospitals etc etc vs the single payer much more streamlined systems in Canada.

I was at a hospice place that had a team of office workers. I'm sure that most of their job was making sure they got paid. Dealing with the healthcare bureaucracy.

More than 1,000 people were hired to deal with all the people in New York State who are filing for unemployment.

There is a new “Coronavirus” economy emerging.

There will be massive unemployment....but there will be new jobs available, too.

I wish the new jobs would compensate for the loss of the old ones, though.

Are you saying that reduced admin costs in the U.S. would translate to lower insurance costs for the consumer? Lower taxes for U.S. citizens? I want to know how people would benefit in lower "administrative costs".

Remember, Medicaid recipients pay nothing for healthcare so lower admin costs of any kind don't matter to them. Government workers pay little to nothing for their healthcare either. Employees on group health don't pay much either, relatively speaking.

I'm wondering if you mean lower taxes. As in, lower government admin costs of government run healthcare programs would mean less government spending which could mean money returned to taxpayers in the form of tax cuts? Average tax rate in Canada is 24%. Average tax rate in the U.S. is 14.2%.

Today you've been touting the Canadian healthcare model as far superior to the U.S. models (public and private) when most Americans (not all) either get it for free or at an affordable cost and don't have nightmarish and arguably even inhumane wait times for care. Seriously, those wait times shouldn't be ignored as an issue. That's not a positive, that's not working correctly; that's broken. That's wrong. They should be radically decreased. In comparison where is the upside???

I'm just trying to understand your point here.

Admin costs reduced by 80% could result in lower taxes/healthcare expenses paid by citizens and/or expanded healthcare services to cover all Americans or some other socially funded services. It would be up to Americans what they did with the savings that are currently wasted on layers of paperwork and profit for health insurance companies.

Uuuh, it’s impossible for most Americans to be getting “free,” (taxpayer funded isn’t free) adequate healthcare considering the well known fact that Americans pay exorbitant insurance premiums and copays and medical bills etc. Americans do not have single payer systems like the UK or Canada and as a result pay a significant portion of their income for health insurance and health services. The whole world knows this about the USA.

No one in a country with single payer healthcare would trade their coverage for the American every man for himself system Unless, perhaps, they are independently wealthy and would pay out of pocket for whatever they needed in the moment no matter where on Earth they were. And that’s the citizens of every other industrialized nation on Earth because the USA is the only one that deprives their citizens of single payer socialized medicine.

You're wrong on certain points.

It's not a fact that "Americans (I'll assume you mean most or a majority) pay exorbitant insurance premiums and copays and medical bills etc." Not true. Copays are minimal. $10, $20 per visit typically if they have them at all. I've already covered the relatively low cost of monthly insurance premiums for employees. Actually it would be more factual to say that most Americans do NOT pay "exorbitant insurance premiums", because they're either getting it for free or their employer is paying the majority of it as an employee benefit.

Also incorrect that Americans "pay a significant portion of their income for health insurance and health services." if you mean most Americans rather than a smaller percentage or some. It's true that some do (we covered that already as well: the self-employed who make over the threshold to be eligible for state funded reduced cost insurance); this smaller group pays an exorbitant amount due to Obamacare.

I think we could all agree that lower taxes would be preferable but you're advocating for lower taxes in the U.S. when the taxes in your country are significantly higher. It would make more sense in my opinion that you'd direct that energy toward advocating for lower taxes in your country.

Obamacare did cause tremendous hardship on the self employed with the situation, not uncommon, of their insurance premiums literally doubling when the U.S. was promised that they'd actually be paying lower costs and they could "keep their doctor, keep their plan" again in many cases the opposite happened; but that's another issue.

Bottom line, it's false that most Americans are paying a significant portion of their income toward health insurance. Maybe "significant portion" should be quantified since there could be differing opinions on what constitutes "significant portion".

Savings on Americans’ healthcare admin costs cannot possibly equate to reduced taxes in Canada. Wtf?

If Americans have such great healthcare coverage, then why are there Americans who have Never seen a doctor in their lives because of the expense? Why do Americans first question how much a treatment is going to cost them vs focus on their health? Why do Americans call Uber’s or taxis to get to a hospital because an ambulance might cost them hundreds or thousands of dollars?

The American healthcare system is not as inexpensive and equitable as you present it to be.

I’ve never met anyone that hasn’t seen a doctor their whole life.
Stop acting like you know anything about us, you don’t live here.
How many poor Americans do you actually even know?Bet I know more.
You use our health care system? I do.
By the way, I AM a poor American.
In one of the poorest states and I wouldn’t trade it for your whole chunk of ice.

You're very interested in the reduction of U.S. healthcare administrative costs because you believe one benefit would be reduced taxes for U.S. citizens. Since the average U.S. tax rate is approximately 14% and Canada's is 24%, I'm saying forget about U.S. taxes and instead turn that focus you have toward helping to reduce your own taxes which are markedly higher than ours.

Can you cite articles about Americans (plural) who have never seen a doctor in their lives because of the expense?

Some Americans do choose higher deductibles. A common deductible is $1,500. However there are plans available where a person can choose a $5,000 or even a $10,000 deductible (virtually unheard of before Obamacare). Some people with higher deductibles might choose to compare costs of medical care before receiving them since any care under their deductible limit is care they'll have to pay. Self employed people more commonly choose higher deductibles to reduce their premium costs.

However, the average person who has an average deductible (e.g. $1,500) with a total out of pocket (OOP) expense of, say, $2,500 would not compare costs on any procedures higher than their OOP. There would be absolutely no reason for them to do so since their health insurance plan pays 100% of the cost over and above their OOP.

To put it another way, other than premiums (which aren't affected by the varying costs of care from one provider to another), if the most a person would pay in OOP in a year was $2,500 and they needed a procedure that would cost more than $2,500, they pay nothing more than the $2,500 whether the procedure is $5,000, $10,000 or $100,000.

Chunk of ice, eh?

Evidently you have no idea where I live

There are palm trees on the beach here.

The Rest of Canada gets Winter. We typically only get a couple weeks of snow & ice and then it’s back to rain like Seattle, followed by short but sunny Summers that are more like L.A. than “chunk of ice.”

Actually, I don’t care about reduced American taxes. I’d prefer to see universal healthcare for all Americans so that every American has decent healthcare coverage at a reasonable cost like we have. I only presented lower taxes as one possible option of what to do with the wasted admin cost money.

I didn’t need an article to tell me. My aunts Winter in Palm Springs. They told me about people they’ve met down South who’ve never seen doctors in their lives because hey can’t afford it.

You miss my point entirely. Why should anyone shop for a healthcare plan and choose between premiums and deductibles and copays and oop expenses etc? The entire thing is a ridiculous waste of time and money. Everyone should simply be covered for all the basics by one single payer government administered plan like every other developed industrialized country in the world. Optional additional coverages? Sure, why not, have at ‘er. I have a Blue Cross plan through my Union that I pay for that gives me additional coverages that the gov’t plan doesn’t. (90% dental coverage, ~$500 optical every 2 years, additional prescription drug coverage, massage etc) But every citizen should be covered for basic go, ER, surgeries, cancer treatments, scans and tests etc. All of us in every industrialized nation surely pay enough in taxes to provide this basic right of healthcare to all citizens.

Bwhahaha.

We have those same scruffy little palm trees landscaped here too.

They are hardly indigenous and pretty much only that particular species can survive the Northwest climate.

The reason why Canada roughly has the same landmass as America but only 1/10th its population is because most of it is barely inhabitable tundra.

Great Britain got the short end of the stick on what parts of North America it was able to hold onto.

Wow. One warm spot.How impressive.
Vancouvers average summer temp is 64.I don’t consider that warm.

I'm assuming you'd "prefer to see universal healthcare for all Americans so that every American has decent healthcare coverage at a reasonable cost" out of a feeling of compassion? If so, I think we can understand each other from where we stand in our respective countries since I feel compassion for Canadians like your friend who literally have to live in pain for two years before getting a much needed knee surgery. I get that you may not think twice about two year wait times to get help from a very painful condition or even 3-4 years as you've described because you've grown up with such a system. Please know that to us in the U.S., that kind of restriction of care is unconscionable and I personally believe to be inhumane.

Warmish about 75 days of the year. Even throughout the the summer there are overcast chilly days. Some days I see people out at the beach wearing jackets in August. Most of the houses and apartments don't have air conditioners. Although we do occasionally get brief humid heatwaves yay.

Last edited by EzraS on 10 Apr 2020, 12:37 am, edited 1 time in total.