This is what happens when everything is financialized. There is no reason that we should be running doctors into the ground. Health professionals are a necessity in a functioning society. I know in the US Government seems to have no problem throwing money at corporations and providing endless tax breaks. But god forbid we proved a functioning health system.
For the US this needs to happen.
1) Medicare For All - a universal, no pay at service, insurance system, everyone taxed at 4% for it.
2) People that have the grades to make it to medical school should get a free ride.
3) Small Private practices should come back with free digital billing with the new health insurance system.
4) Price regulation on all basic medical supplies and medicines. No more $20 tongue depressors
5) All medicines researched at public Universities will not be sold or given to private industry. They will be licensed. That money goes back into supporting this system.
I don't think you've done the math on that. Healthcare constitutes 17% of US GDP. A huge chunk of that is paid by self-insured employers. An additional 4% income tax wouldn't be sufficient to fund a "Medicare for All" program. Any further increases in income taxes would be highly regressive for low-income people. And the baseline Medicare program doesn't even cover a lot of stuff that is typically included in private medical insurance such as prescription drugs (need at Part D supplement for that).
That 17% includes Net cost of health insurance. So that would go down a lot with the profit taken out of it. Also expenditures would go down with price regulation and the system would also generate money from licensed medicines. Also the simplified billing and administration of a single insurance system would save a ton of money. Especially since a lot of the overhead in hospitals is admin. This simplified billing would let doctors have private practices again.
You're dreaming. Commercial payer organizations have low profit margins, especially since the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) instituted an 85% minimum medical loss ratio. Some of them already operate as non-profits. Eliminating them wouldn't free up nearly enough funding to make "Medicare for All" work with a mere 4% income tax increase. Do the math.
You appear to be confusing margins with absolute amounts. Eliminating all health insurance profits wouldn't be sufficient to close the gap on your "Medicare for All" proposal, not even close. I'm not necessarily opposed to a single payer system, but you need to do the math and be realistic about costs.
They just get progressively worse and start adding expenses for the patients. The quality is terrible, despite the propaganda. The best companies were offering private healthcare with their offer.
I've seen it happen in two countries, now I live in one which just made most of private healthcare (which is excellent quality) available as public. It's working well for now but they're spending a ridiculous amount of money and it's not sustainable. Doctors are happy, I'm not because my taxes increased from 12.5% to 15%.
Public mismanagement is huge, they'll screw it up.
The USA government needs to stop being in bed with insurance companies to make everything expensive, then your private system will be fine.
For the US this needs to happen.
1) Medicare For All - a universal, no pay at service, insurance system, everyone taxed at 4% for it.
2) People that have the grades to make it to medical school should get a free ride.
3) Small Private practices should come back with free digital billing with the new health insurance system.
4) Price regulation on all basic medical supplies and medicines. No more $20 tongue depressors
5) All medicines researched at public Universities will not be sold or given to private industry. They will be licensed. That money goes back into supporting this system.