Would Medicare for All Actually Save Us Money?

Some people are going to hear what I just said about Medicare for All, single payer healthcare and they're going to say, yeah, but how are we going to pay for it? Because that's the common one that people will bring up. Now let me address that because that's a really important question. And usually when you actually substantively address it, people go, oh, okay, that makes a lot more sense. How are they going to pay it? So very simply put, the way the system works right now, it costs more than if we had Medicare for All. Why is that? It's an unnecessary for-profit middleman that essentially acts like a mafia. So what we're saying is, I'm going to remove that mafia from around your neck and you're going to, it's basically... What is that mafia you're referring to? That mafia is the for-profit health insurance company. So they have to take their cut as the middleman between you and your doctor. If we just remove that, have the government at no profit margin be the single insurer, that's what a single payer means, they're the single insurer, then we actually end up saving $5 trillion over the course of 10 years. And that's not Kyle Kalinsky talking, that's a detailed study from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Now talking, that's a liberal fucking place. So what do you do when you have all these insurance companies? What happens to those insurance companies? What happens to all those jobs? What happens to all that money? The insurance companies go away. Go away? I mean, the businesses go under. So you kill those businesses. If I say you're not allowed to cut your lawn, unless... Let's say the guy wants to charge you $100. I say, no, Joe. I'm going to be the one who pays the person who cuts your lawn. You have to give me $200. So if somebody came along and said, no, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, hey, middleman guy, we're going to get rid of you. And Joe, you want to cut your lawn? Give that guy $100 and you're all set. Wouldn't you say, well, that makes sense. The middleman guy, he can piss off. Because that's the way I look at it. The reality is when people argue for choice in health insurance, look at it like this. Would you say, hey, man, don't take away my choice when it comes to picking my firefighter? People are like, what do you mean? No, the way it works is there's a fire and you get help. End of discussion. They will come. You don't say, whoa, whoa, whoa, I want to pick my fire department. Well, this is the same thing with healthcare. The idea, you're going to be able to pick your doctor. That's perfectly fine. But the idea of you'll have your choice between insurance companies, that's like saying, pick which, do you want the Irish mafia ripping you off or the Italian mafia ripping you off or the Jewish mafia ripping you off? Go ahead. I'm giving you choice. In some areas, the idea of choice is fundamentally absurd. It's like saying, well, let's shut off the road system instead of being public. Let's have it privately run. And you could turn, make a left on that road, make a left on that road or make a right on that road. Don't take away my choice of road. I want to pay for that one or that one or that one. No, it's all there. It's all free at the point of service. And this is the whole idea of having a public utility. This is the whole idea of having something that's off the table in a civilized society. And again, what the studies show is it actually saves money. So the real question people should be asking is, how can we afford to keep having the system that we have right now? Because we pay more than the rest of the developed world and we have 30 to 45,000 Americans that die every year because they don't have access to basic healthcare. And we have 500,000 people who go bankrupt as a result of medical bills. So what you're saying is that it would abolish insurance companies essentially? So there is one caveat to that. And that caveat is what's called supplemental health insurance. So what that means is if there's something that Joe Rogan likes, that's a medical procedure that isn't scientifically proven yet, but it's still something that you like, there would be private health insurance companies that sell you supplemental insurance, which means on top of everything that you already have through Medicare for All. So if you were getting like stem cell therapy or something like that. In an ideal Medicare for All system, and Bernie, believe me, has gone so far above and beyond any criticism. I mean, his thing is airtight. It gives dental, it gives vision, it gets everything. I wouldn't be surprised if under that Medicare for All bill, the stem cells thing is covered. But let's say something like homeopathy, which is like the water. Horse shit. Horse shit. Total horse shit. But- You want to cover that by insurance? No, Medicare for All would not cover that because it's so speculative. So private horse shit insurance? Private horse shit insurance or plastic surgery, things of that nature. But that's an important point because- Is it real? They have private insurance for plastic surgery? No, no, no. I'm saying it would be- They don't. Theoretically legal for it under a Medicare for All system because it's supplemental. How could you have insurance for plastic surgery? Like I decided my ears are too big. So maybe the market wouldn't be there, but it would be legally possible is the point. So it doesn't fully ban private insurance, but it does plan. It bans what's called duplicative care. So you can't say, hey, I'm an insurance company. I'm going to come in and offer you something that's already covered in full by the single payer system. And the reason why that's there is we don't want you getting ripped off by some charlatan. That's what you're saying. But it would essentially gut the health insurance industry. It would make it so that you no longer have a health insurance company CEO is making tens of millions of dollars off the backs of people while people die because they can't get health insurance. Yes, it would. And that's a good thing. That's a positive thing. It's a good thing for us. It's a sale to sell that. Well, the thing is, we have this issue where we have a status quo bias where people think like, well, because it works how it works right now, therefore the idea of addressing it and changing it seems so overwhelming that we just default to how we have it now. But the problem is we know as a matter of fact that the way we do it now is the most batshit crazy way you could possibly do it because they research this stuff all the time. They study this stuff all the time. And every single time they look at it, the US comes dead last in the developed world when it comes to health care. So we finished. There was a recent study from the Commonwealth Fund. They found that they studied 11 different countries. The US is 11th out of 11 when it comes to health care. So every other country that does the single payer system, which we were talking about, and there's different versions of it. There's multi-payer. There's single payer. There's private funding of, excuse me, there's public funding of private insurance, public funding of public insurance. But bottom line is any other way you do it is better than the way we do it right now. And just to be clear, because some people say, well, what about Obamacare? What was Obamacare? Obamacare was originally a Heritage Foundation plan, which is a right wing think tank. So that was basically Mitt Romney's health care bill, Newt Gingrich's health care bill. And the whole idea of that was we're going to force people to buy private insurance. And I don't like that idea at all. I dislike that mess. I've been very critical of Obamacare. I think there's a good case to make that it was a step in the right direction because anything was better than the system that we had at the time. But I would say that was just a little step on the path to what we should have, which is a Medicare for All system, where health care is a right and not a privilege. We catch up to the rest of the developed world. And again, we should go above and beyond the rest of the world. Because like in Canada, I don't think they have dental covered by it. But Bernie's bill does provide dental. So I think that this is one of those issues where when it's fully explained to people, it's kind of a no-brainer. And you can get people to realize, like, no, no, no, the system is totally screwing you right now. And we can fix it.