Ethical & Practical Reasons for passing National Improved Medicare for All (NIM4A)
(HR 1976 in the House)
* Healthcare is a Human Right!
* Without universal and equitable access by everyone to the same high-quality healthcare, democracy cannot be sustained and no one is truly free.
* It is immoral to profit off of anyone's illness or injury. Currently, tens of thousands of people die yearly in the U.S. directly due to the inability to afford healthcare.
* Commercial for-profit insurance (Managed Care/MCOs) pay medical providers a lump sum of money on the first of the year to pay for all their patients' medical services for that year.
* At the end of that year, if patient services have cost more than the lump sum the provider was paid, the provider bears the loss, and if patient services ended up costing less than the lump sum, the provider profits. This creates a conflict of interest... pitting profit against patient services, which incentivizes cutting patient services in order to generate higher profits.
* Under NIM4A there is NO conflict of interest. The patients are the only investors and there is NO profit. And there will be no more corporate insurance bureaucrats paid to deny claims in order to generate higher profits.
* Under NIM4A EVERYONE is covered for the FULL COST of EVERY medical need FOR LIFE and can see their choice of ANY doctor or other medical practitioner anywhere in the country... no more limited networks!
* Covered medical needs include: all office visits; hospitalizations; rehabilitation; substance abuse treatment; prescriptions; long-term care and support services (institutional & in
home/community-based); mental health; dental; vision (including glasses); hearing (including hearing aids); podiatry; all reproductive (including contraceptives, abortion, prenatal, delivery, post-natal, and gender-affirming care); and hospice.
* Under NIM4A all practitioners, clinics, hospitals, nursing facilities, etc. will be non-profit. They will be federally funded based on the medical needs of the population they serve... instead of the way it is now where they have to generate a profit to remain open and operational. NIM4A will end the rash of hospital and clinic closures in so many of our neediest communities... those in poor and rural areas.
Financial Reasons for passing National Improved Medicare for All (NIM4A)(HR 1976 in the House)
Commercial health insurers spend 12% to 15% of every dollar on administrative costs.
Government-run health insurance spends only 2% to 4% of every dollar on administrative costs. The reason for the difference is that commercial health insurers are "middlemen" who (in addition to paying for our medical services) also have the following expenses:
1. Profits for their investors
2. Competitive salaries and bonuses for the best profit-generating CEOs
3. Very expensive marketing ads for TV, mailings.
4. Large administrative staff and marketing experts.
But government-run health insurance has none of these expenses. Because there are no investors demanding profits, the government does not have to pay a high-priced CEO to figure out the best way to generate profits, or pay for ads to compete with other insurers, or pay for redundant administrative staff and marketing experts.
Having government-run health insurance is like getting your health insurance directly from the factory instead of going to a retail store with all its added overhead costs. The only thing the government does is hold onto our money until it is needed to pay for actual medical services. That's why the administrative cost would be so tiny.
Government-run health insurance will also completely eliminate the current need for medical physicians and other medical practitioners to maintain very large clerical staffs just to deal with the billing. Each insurer has its own diagnosis billing codes, and numerous plans, each with its own rules and policies. Dealing with all these administrative complexities costs thousands of dollars a year for every medical practice. All these added costs will go away under National Improved Medicare for All (as written in HR 1976 in the US House).
Households with incomes less than $250,00 a year could save several thousand dollars a year. Only the extremely wealthy may pay a bit more than now. And as a nation, we would save roughly $600 Billion a year as compared to what we pay under our current for-profit system.