The single-payer case is straightforward to make. It does not take rocket science to pay a bill. If a doctor's office or hospital have one entity to send a bill to, then the inefficiency of excessive staff is eliminated.
Medicare for all is a no-brainer. Medicare is currently a virtual single-payer system that covers the elderly. Scaling it to include the entire country would not be difficult.
The purpose of health care is to heal. The goal of private business is to make a profit. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. However, companies maximize earnings by providing more services and products. These two realities explain a medical culture of over-testing under the pretense of protecting against lawsuits as well as the overprescription of drugs partially responsible for the opioid epidemic and much more. It is a clear proof that medicine belongs outside of the capitalist market as examined in the article '"Is curing patients a sustainable business model?” Goldman Sachs analysts ask.'
One-shot cures for diseases are not great for business—more specifically, they’re bad for longterm profits—Goldman Sachs analysts noted in an April 10 report for biotech clients, first reported by CNBC.
The investment banks’ report, titled “The Genome Revolution,” asks clients the touchy question: “Is curing patients a sustainable business model?” The answer may be “no,” according to follow-up information provided.
Analyst Salveen Richter and colleagues laid it out: "The potential to deliver “one-shot cures” is one of the most attractive aspects of gene therapy, genetically engineered cell therapy, and gene editing. However, such treatments offer a very different outlook with regard to recurring revenue versus chronic therapies... While this proposition carries tremendous value for patients and society, it could represent a challenge for genome medicine developers looking for sustained cash flow."
For a real-world example, they pointed to Gilead Sciences, which markets treatments for hepatitis C that have cure rates exceeding 90 percent. In 2015, the company’s hepatitis C treatment sales peaked at $12.5 billion. But as more people were cured and there were fewer infected individuals to spread the disease, sales began to languish. Goldman Sachs analysts estimate that the treatments will bring in less than $4 billion this year.
The bottom line is that in health care, profit becomes an expense. It depends on people being sick. That is both mathematically and morally dubious. It is unsustainable and cannot stand. Single-payer Medicare for all is disparaged because when the realities come out, it is clearly superior.
We can make the change to a nonprofit single-payer Medicare for all abruptly or incrementally. There are pitfalls to each. The abrupt method would cause much disruption that could raise the ire of the population if not properly managed. An incremental change runs the risk of sabotaging it right back to a dysfunctional state.The Affordable Care Act for all practical purposes was a gradual change to our healthcare system, and Donald Trump and his cabal are killing it by a thousand cuts.
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