u/Silver_Guidance4134

Great event today at Hing Hay Park in CID for immigrant rights. 14,000 people lost acess to healthcare today due to federal cuts. Rep. Santos, Tatiana Brown, Tanya Woo and a bunch of my friends from the Pacific Islander Health Board and Healthcare is a Human Right - Washington (HCHR) were in attendance. It got great news coverage from several outlets.

Learn more about HCHR at: https://www.hchrwashington.org/

RAND has been tracking payments since 2017. They take real claims from employer health plans and reprice each one using Medicare's formulas for the same service at the same hospital. So 300% means the insurer paid three times what Medicare would have.

The national average was 242% in 2020 and rose to 254% in the 2022 update. Florida is now the highest at 346%. Arkansas is the lowest at 162%. Maryland isn't on the chart because it already sets one price for every payer, which is the closest thing the US has to what this sub is asking for.

It's interesting what RAND found when they looked at the trend. Prices had no clear link to quality. They didn't track with how many Medicare or Medicaid patients a hospital treats, which is the excuse hospitals usually give for charging private plans more. The one thing that did predict price was market share. Fewer competing hospitals in a metro lead to higher prices.

Montana's state employee plan capped what it pays at 235% of Medicare back in 2016 and premiums flattened. Oregon capped at 200% for state workers and saved over $100 million. Those were single-buyer decisions. This chart shows what happens when there's no single buyer.

Source is RAND's Hospital Price Transparency Study, Round 4 (2020 inpatient data) for the chart, Round 5.1 for the 2022 figures. Made in matplotlib.

Via UAW @ UAW

Please see both of two panels for information and figures on improved Medicare For All. #SinglePayerNow

In 2024, Katie Hobbs made tackling Arizona medical debt a priority. Her administration just hit a major milestone- clearing over $1 billion for over 670K Arizonans. It didn’t cost Arizonans a penny 💪🏾

This was a no application process. People just received notification in the mail.

She worked w/ the Undue Medical Debt organization. They purchased medical debts belonging to burdened patients in bundled portfolios for a fraction of their face value.

Every Democrat should be running on clearing medical debt. This is a major GOTV, swing the swing voters issue