A new study has found that Medicare for All would save over 100,000 lives in the U.S. per year while also reducing Americans’ health care spending by more than $1 trillion annually. Yale University and University of Maryland researchers have estimated that the universal single payer health care system introduced in the Medicare for All Act would prevent 114,000 deaths per year.

    • huf [he/him]@hexbear.net
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      21
      ·
      2 days ago

      yeah, this fundamentally misunderstands the purpose of healthcare in the US. the point is to extract money, any health or care that happens is incidental.

  • juice_ [none/use name]@hexbear.net
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    8
    ·
    2 days ago

    Under capitalism what is good and makes sense to the workers is bad and makes no sense to the capitalists. Our interests are fundamentally opposed. I’m all for electoral campaigns as a tactic, since it builds engagement and develops consciousness. But the strategy is to build for power, which means a mass movement and a worker’s party.

  • GrouchyGrouse [he/him]@hexbear.net
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    16
    ·
    2 days ago

    If you’ve got a fence sitting liberal in your life show them this study and explain to them the Marxist analysis that this money and these deaths are the cost of doing things the capitalist way

    Try and reframe it in their minds. It is not that universal healthcare would save money and lives (a hypothetical): capitalism is killing people and charging us for it!

  • limer@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    6
    ·
    2 days ago

    One issue about Medicare for all, that I do not see talked about very much, is that many places have their medical clinics and doctors used to capacity now. They cannot handle a threefold increase of patients

    Free medical care, if it ever exists, will not mean timely assistance for most communities. The health resources need to be expanded. Like most infrastructure in the USA, this has multiple barriers against improvement

    • SoyViking [he/him]@hexbear.net
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      2 days ago

      Maybe some of that trillion in savings could be put towards constructing medical facilities and training healthcare professionals?

      • limer@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        2 days ago

        More medical professionals would be needed to work. And more suppliers would be required. Either would need a cultural revolution and years to change, even with the money flowing.

        It’s similar to throwing money at industries that were outsourced. It’s not possible because of a lack of prerequisites that cannot be willed into existence without years or decades of effort. Shipbuilding comes to mind.

        The fact that nobody is seriously trying to do the prep work for such a monumental work in medical shows two things: nobody seriously expects Medicare for all; and the USA is fundamentally incapable of change.

    • infuziSporg [e/em/eir]@hexbear.net
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      1 day ago

      This is a capitalist critique of single-payer healthcare and it needs to be pushed back against.

      A vital aspect of M4A is going to be breaking the power of all the subsectors of the healthcare industry. Another is going to be reducing curative practices by making more use of preventative practices; people with access to preventative care end up needing a lot less care than people who wait until they are acutely sick and injured.

      I would expect that “reducing Americans’ healthcare spending by $1T annually” would be proportionate with how much less would be needed.

      If it came down to it, market forces, along with modest incentives/interventions and a phase-in period, would smooth this problem out entirely.

    • Runcible [none/use name]@hexbear.net
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      14
      ·
      edit-2
      2 days ago

      this would let us send more weapons to Israel!

      edit: and I guess some people, too

      edit2: I assumed it was obvious I am not endorsing this, but I guess you never know