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Spinaccio t1_je804j3 wrote

Reply to comment by Jf2611 in ELI5: What is Universal Healthcare by Thegreatcornholio459

That is a lot I didn’t know, thanks for answering. Do the countries with single payer insurance have similar networks?

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Jf2611 t1_je8129c wrote

Not even close to the same scale. Single payer is a type of universal healthcare. In a nutshell, it means that a single entity is contracted to provide healthcare. They would need some admin, but nothing to the scale that the US system has. With a single payer system, there wouldn't be the need to verify insurance coverage, determine costs, etc. It is what it is.

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Spinaccio t1_je81x7r wrote

So, would switching to a single payer system require a whole set of other programs to employ all these talented people? Like a New Deal? Seems like our gornment would have to do a lot of work to plan and administrate something so massive. Like, do their job.

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Jf2611 t1_je82sky wrote

There would be a need for jobs, for sure. But there would be a lot of redundancy if your goal was to give everyone a job in the new system.

Let's say there are 10 insurance companies and we suddenly had to get down to one organization. So that's 10 CEOs down to 1 - what jobs do the other 9 get? The further down the chain of command the more redundancy you get. You could probably run the new administration with the headcount from two of those 10 companies, maybe even less since one system would allow for streamlined optimizations of policy and admin work.

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Manofchalk t1_je8321u wrote

Would it require, no.

Would it be a good political move to do so, probably. Though attempting to cut down the US for-profit health insurance industry with its massive lobbying arm is already unhealthy for a political career so maybe the ire of thousands of unemployed middle managers and cubicle workers wont matter.

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GermaneRiposte101 t1_je84ib3 wrote

A major advantage of Universal Health is that the they can use their size to reduce the cost of medicine, sometimes by several orders of magnitude

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throwawaydanc3rrr t1_je89o91 wrote

Often this is done with rationing the care by wait lists.

In the United States it is (mostly) rationed by price.

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