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[Micro102]

It’s not even a question of deserving it: We have real-world evidence that health care workers have quit/are quitting in large numbers, despite being offered higher wages, because of COVID-related stress. Single payer can’t fix that - you can only fix that by making it easier to be a health care worker (Edit: or paying even higher wages).  That will implicitly have higher supply, lowering prices. Right now even with higher prices supply has dropped, which is the least desirable outcome for society.  Even if they were covered by insurance, if there are no available workers, people will suffer, deserving or no. Single payer still has to pay for enough spare capacity to ensure everyone who needs care, gets it.

The few health workers remaining are doing well though - but if you taxed them more, the calculus would change - how much more would they need to be paid to keep working with higher stress, if they got taxed more? You would never make up the higher cost from their contribution, so you’d have to tax others more to pay for the higher healthcare salaries.

That "making it easier to be a healthcare worker" is key here. Because from a commodity standpoint, there is no reason to keep enough staff around to treat everyone, just so long as the people they do treat pay, and it becomes profitable. Single payer removes the commodity aspect. The healthcare system now isn't run for money, but for making sure everyone gets healthcare. So you can hire more people to ensure that people can comfortably work as a healthcare provider.

And we can see that this does not spin out into a cost sink because of the link I posted earlier. Every other country does this and pays for less per person.

Doctors agreed to join a career, not become permanent bondsmen. Everyone else can refuse to do a specific job you don't like (say, baking someone a particular cake); even employees can quit, and many doctors are of course self-employed. Like I said before, I'm not a fan of slavery as an economic solution.
More practically, though, regardless of whether you're a fan of it - do you think this will encourage more people to become doctors? Anything that restricts the supply of doctors will drive prices up.

This isn't slavery. They are being compensated just as everyone else is. What you are arguing for is someone's right to kill someone else by denying life saving care based on personal beliefs, and that is unacceptable.

Speak for yourself.

No, as someone who has a Bachelor's in Evolutionary Human Biology, I am also speaking for the scientific community in general. You can see the tug of war between selfishness and altruism in games like "the prisoners' dilemma".

[jipehog]

I am not clear if the proposition here talks about a single payer system like in Canada or a hybrid single-payer/private insurance system like in Australia. But according to the Wikipidea entry for USA recent study seem to suggest that single payer system will reduce healthcare expenditure. I have seen many vague claims to the contrary but no study to support them.

Ok that clearly isn't going to happen because they are currently working for a price. I have no interest in your insane hypotheticals.

The point is about the concept of "deserve". Does a Ku Klux Klan member deserve free health care? If the town has only black doctors, do the black doctors have the right to refuse to operate on him?

Replace doctor with cop, paramedic, firefighter, soldier, etc and choose whatever label that works for you.

[Frumple]

That "making it easier to be a healthcare worker" is key here. Because from a commodity standpoint, there is no reason to keep enough staff around to treat everyone, just so long as the people they do treat pay, and it becomes profitable

Psst, hey. Want to know one straightforward way to make things easier to be a healthcare worker? Get rid of most to all of private health insurance, so they're not incessantly bogged down by dealing with fifty billion competing, different, sets of paperwork and asshole companies trying to avoid paying them for services rendered :V

We know for a fact millions to billions of the dollars draining into our healthcare system is getting pissed away dealing with the (intentionally!) ever more complicated paperwork private health insurance foists on all of us in an attempt to fuck people over for profit, and every dime of that has a cost in human hours that could be spent doing something more useful.

Calculus is pretty clear; fuckers fucking with the rest of us, so fuck 'em, screw the private health insurance industry into a pitiful ghost of its current corpsesucking self

[MrRoboto75]

No, it's great that neither me, the doctor, the insurance, the person in the doctor office who does billing; none of us know the price of any given service until after it's done.

Like I buy the same pills every month at the pharmacist and I pay a different amount every time.  No one involved could explain why.

[Micro102]

I feel like they negotiate the prices every time. The hospital charges $50 for a tablet of aspirin to argue for the highest price insurance would pay out because they exist to make money, and the insurance company argues for the lowest price because they exist to make money. Over and over and over.

[WealthyRadish]

It's curious that the government bans slavery, thereby subsidizing reckless behavior that would otherwise get one enslaved (as if they're entitled to my labor). As a slavery opposer and 31 trillion dollars comprehender, I'd like to remind everyone of the effect this policy has on the deficit and the slavecatcher industry. Now excuse me, I need to go reinvent the labor theory of value and complain about communism.

[Schmaven]

...
Now excuse me, I need to go reinvent the labor theory of value and complain about communism.

I don't know if the following is truly communism or not, but what I often hear argued for is 'From each person, what they can produce, and to each person, what they need.'

Whether that is a hell or a paradise however depends on what and how much everyone produces.  And also on preventing too many people from mooching off of others out of laziness. 

Any system however seems to depend on the qualities of those in it / organizing it.  So in my view, the way to fix the deficit is not much different than any other issue.  It has to start with people's motivations and ethics.  That however is outside the realm of politics and laws, so other approaches are necessary. 

[Maximum Spin]

It's curious that the government bans slavery, thereby subsidizing reckless behavior that would otherwise get one enslaved (as if they're entitled to my labor). As a slavery opposer and 31 trillion dollars comprehender, I'd like to remind everyone of the effect this policy has on the deficit and the slavecatcher industry. Now excuse me, I need to go reinvent the labor theory of value and complain about communism.

Lol, the labor theory of value is a complete philosophical crock. It's worthless.

[lemon10]

Looks like the latest Maximum Spin Hot-take™ is that single payer healthcare is slavery because it doesn't let doctors decide to kill people and that any major changes to the American medical system will cause the economy to collapse and everyone to die.
---

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The meme above is what the discussion around US healthcare reminds me of the most.
Single payer works and the current American system doesn't. Its really that simple.

You can go and say stuff like giving everyone healthcare is slavery for doctors and that they would rather kill themselves then abandon their beloved insurance companies*, but a simple look at reality shows that if that is a problem its one that *squint* uh... pretty much every other developed country has solved.

*Although real talk, doctors also hate the American insurance system and it is a contributor to burnout. Getting rid of it would totally increase the supply of doctors over time.

[Maximum Spin]

Looks like the latest Maximum Spin Hot-take™ is that single payer healthcare is slavery because it doesn't let doctors decide to kill people and that any major changes to the American medical system will cause the economy to collapse and everyone to die.

... are you, like, constitutionally incapable of telling apart different conversation threads?

[EuchreJack]

Well. at least this was a distraction from the Debt Ceiling crisis.

I'm not worried. After several months of dicking around, the leaders will figure it out.

[KittyTac]

*comes back to AmeriPol*

As usual, I see.

[jipehog]

We know for a fact millions to billions of the dollars draining into our healthcare system is getting pissed away dealing with the (intentionally!) ever more complicated paperwork private health insurance foists on all of us in an attempt to fuck people over for profit, and every dime of that has a cost in human hours that could be spent doing something more useful.

Calculus is pretty clear; fuckers fucking with the rest of us, so fuck 'em, screw the private health insurance industry into a pitiful ghost of its current corpsesucking self

Politics is the remote sire of statistic calculus. Its very easy to fudge numbers to suit the 'fact' you want. That why studies are a good start to do more studies.

[McTraveller]

That’s why it’s politics: is it really the government’s role to redistribute wealth (for any reason)? Is it to provide services? Or is it just to keep the peace and prevent people from abusing each other?

How should the government balance use of carrot versus stick when pursuing any goal?

[bloop_bleep]

Even if the numbers were exactly the same as you describe, divert those $12914 that in part go into the pockets of insurance companies, and some people now have more money to spend on other things, while people who work for or own shares in insurance companies, as well as the people who get money from those people directly or indirectly, now have less. The total amount of economic activity doesn't change, because you didn't add any value to the system, you just moved it around.

Whuh...? Uh, yes. The insurance companies have less money, and the government has more money, because the government can actually negotiate with them on the price. The government has a smaller deficit because it isn't effectively handing out massive freebies to hoarders for no returns.

Why do you say that unemployment benefits and social security increases the deficit, but letting insurance companies milk the public coffers because the government is legally unable to safeguard its financial interests is not increasing the deficit and "lol you can't change it it's immutable you're just moving stuff about why no know economics 4head?"

Even your extremely dubious laws of conservation are not consistent.