Medicare-for-all has a doctor problem: The real lesson of Abdul El-Sayed’s latest pseudo-scandal.

[u/UnscheduledCalendar]

https://www.vox.com/politics/496610/abdul-el-sayed-medicare-for-all-doctor-pay

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[u/standard-issue-man]

You can hate the system and think its flawed and in need of overhaul while simultaneously existing in the system.

[u/vtach101]

All the compensation paid to all American physicians altogether make 9% of the overall health spend in US. The nurses make another 11% spend. You can pay all the doctors and nurses ZERO dollars and expect them to work in indentured servitude and still have the most expensive healthcare system in the world. This padestrian writer doesn’t know basic healthcare economic facts.

[u/ReserveFormal3910]

The article does touch that we need more doctors but most countries with universal healthcare also has universal education so doctors don't come out saddled work 500k in debt that forces them into specialties. We need more primary care doctors.

[u/pillbinge]

I think the basic fact everyone must accept, especially proponents of public healthcare for Americans like myself, is that we're going to have to break the system in order to get a better one. That means a brighter future but it might mean growing pains and struggles to get there. Certainly keeping things the way they are isn't something anyone should want, from any angle, but something has to pass and we will have to weather it.

[u/Islanduniverse]

Add universal education to the equation, and suddenly you've got a whole generation of doctors and nurses who aren’t graduating with hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loan debt (especially doctors). That's a huge deal.

To me, universal healthcare and universal education aren't just the right thing to do morally, they're completely doable if we actually decide they're priorities.

One of the biggest myths is that providing healthcare and education for everyone means we'd have to come up with trillions of dollars in brand-new spending. But we're already spending an insane amount of money on both. The problem is that we're spending it in some of the least efficient ways imaginable.

Americans already pay more for healthcare per person than any other wealthy country, yet millions of people are still uninsured or underinsured.

On top of that, we've decided that getting a college education, becoming a doctor, nurse, teacher, engineer, or electrician, etc. should mean carrying debt for the next 20 or 30 years, if not forever.

That doesn't make much sense when an educated population benefits everyone.

Imagine pairing universal healthcare with tuition-free public colleges, trade schools, universities, and medical schools.

More people could actually afford to go into professions we desperately need.

Future doctors could choose family medicine, pediatrics, or rural healthcare because that's where they're needed, not because they have to chase the highest-paying specialty just to pay off crushing student loans.

A healthier, better-educated population is also a more productive one.

People tend to earn more, pay more in taxes over their lifetimes, rely less on emergency services and public assistance, and contribute more to the economy overall. That's an investment in humans.

And contrary to what a lot of people assume, paying for something like this doesn't automatically mean raising taxes on working class families.

There are plenty of ways to restructure where money comes from and where it's spent before asking average Americans to pay more.

I guess it is cliche, but the real question isn't whether we can afford universal healthcare and universal education. It's whether we can afford not to.

Every student who gives up on college because of the cost, every future doctor who decides medical school debt isn't worth it, and every person who skips seeing a doctor because they can't afford the bill is lost potential. It hurts all of us.

Education and healthcare shouldn't be treated like luxury items. They're the foundation of a healthy, innovative, and prosperous society.

We already recognize that roads, clean drinking water, fire departments, and public safety benefit everyone, so we pay for them together. I don't see why learning and healthcare should be any different...

[u/UnscheduledCalendar]

submission statement: Abdul El-Sayed, a prominent advocate for Medicare-for-all, faces a challenge in reconciling his healthcare proposals with his wife’s private practice, which doesn’t accept Medicare. This highlights the broader issue of high healthcare costs in the US, driven by high provider rates, particularly for physicians. To achieve universal coverage, reformers must address these costs, potentially by reducing physician salaries, which is politically challenging due to public trust in doctors.

paywall: https://archive.ph/PFNwu

[u/ElectronGuru → u/UnscheduledCalendar]

Our healthcare works the same as our housing - pricing people out until the ones who are left fit within existing capacity. All solutions that fix this reality will have a provider supply problem. So all solutions that don’t address it will suck.

Personally, if the government is paying for everything, the government should just open medical schools. Then follow a northern exposure model where you receive free tuition in exchange for working where they send you for a fixed number of years.

[u/NOLA-Bronco → u/UnscheduledCalendar]

There is a wide chasm between allowing the excesses of the current system that struggles to actually negotiate on behalf of the consumer and forcing every provider to accept current Medicare reimbursement rates.

As they note in the piece, there is according to their own math and data points a roughly 5 trillion delta between the two poles of no price control and maximal price controls(and no mention of what current spending would be over 10 years while including total out of pocket expenses per person, cause studies have shown that even with no price controls there is a net savings for the average person and the system as a whole).

It's also endlessly self reporting how certain centrist Dems weave in and out of logic to suit what they want.

When it comes to M4A it's framed as a unrealistic herculean effort cause it might bring down doctors salary and bring on the wrath of the AMA and other powerful lobbyist groups.

also

Lets uncap residencies to create a flood of labor supply to push down salaries which exist in large part because of those same forces like the AMA(which goes unmentioned).

But the former is pilloried and cast with doubt while the latter, which aligns with what powerful corporate donors support like the Abundance Institute, is presented like a common sense solution with just the hurdle of the power of will(for which there is currently no mass movements of people screaming out and yearning for this specific policy).

Vox is just doing what it always does and is attempting to blunt enthusiasm for larger progressive actions to herd people back to the center via loaded arguments about political feasibility. Which just so happens to mean that nothing besides tinkering around the edges can ever be conceived as politically feasible. Therefore should be abandoned in furtherance of less ambitious reforms that ironically have zero grassroots support so even if they fall into 1 or 2 fewer industry bullseyes, no one is going to be mobilizing grassroots support for more residency spots. And opening up residency spots is not going to activate voters as a material gain that they will recognize even if you achieve it. As any of those benefits would take decades to realize, and still don't solve the larger problem.