Universal health care could have saved more than 330,000 U.S. lives during COVID

[onthedarkside]

 

The numbers of lives lost and dollars spent would have been significantly lower if coverage had been extended to everyone, a new study says

 

Americans spend more on health care than people in any other nation. Yet in any given year, the piecemeal nature of the American medical insurance system causes many preventable deaths and unnecessary costs. Not surprisingly, COVID-19 only exacerbated this already dire public health issue, as evidenced by the U.S.’s elevated mortality, compared with that of other high-income countries.

 

A new study quantifies the severity of the impact of the pandemic on Americans who did not have access to health insurance. According to findings published on Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, from the pandemic’s beginning until mid-March 2022, universal health care could have saved more than 338,000 lives from COVID-19 alone. The U.S. also could have saved $105.6 billion in health care costs associated with hospitalizations from the disease—on top of the estimated $438 billion that could be saved in a nonpandemic year.

 

(more)

 

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/universal-health-care-could-have-saved-more-than-330-000-u-s-lives-during-covid/#

 

 

Source study:

 

https://medicine.yale.edu/news-article/yale-study-more-than-335000-lives-could-have-been-saved-during-pandemic-if-us-had-universal-health-care/

 

[Jerno]

Yes, but that might have raised taxes 0.1% and Republicans would have freaked out and protested wildly and of course blame the stupid sick people for getting sick. Who's the real stupid ones?

[John Drake]

A good portion of that 330,000 likely are no longer drawing social security and medicare/medicaid. Lots of money saved. Lots of congressmen happy. 

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21 minutes ago, John Drake said:

A good portion of that 330,000 likely are no longer drawing social security and medicare/medicaid. Lots of money saved. Lots of congressmen happy. 

It's a pity that the previous president never quite managed to complete the plan he claimed was almost finished 5 days before his inauguration. Apparently, it would have provided health insurance for everybody. Also, he never quite managed to force insurance companies to negotiate prices with Medicare and Medicaid despite his promise to do just that. Such a pity.

 

Trump vows ‘insurance for everybody’ in Obamacare replacement plan

President-elect Donald Trump said in a weekend interview that he is nearing completion of a plan to replace President Obama’s signature health-care law with the goal of “insurance for everybody,” while also vowing to force drug companies to negotiate directly with the government on prices in Medicare and Medicaid.

Trump declined to reveal specifics in the telephone interview late Saturday with The Washington Post, but any proposals from the incoming president would almost certainly dominate the Republican effort to overhaul federal health policy as he prepares to work with his party’s congressional majorities.

Trump’s plan is likely to face questions from the right, after years of GOP opposition to further expansion of government involvement in the health-care system, and from those on the left, who see his ideas as disruptive to changes brought by the Affordable Care Act that have extended coverage to tens of millions of Americans

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-vows-insurance-for-everybody-in-obamacare-replacement-plan/2017/01/15/5f2b1e18-db5d-11e6-ad42-f3375f271c9c_story.html

[James105]

There is that word "could" again, which is without doubt the hardest working word in the English language.  

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5 minutes ago, James105 said:

There is that word "could" again, which is without doubt the hardest working word in the English language.  

Of course, if you believe that access to decent medical care would have no effect on outcomes, then you've made a good point. Otherwise, not so much.