First off, I studied health care in Sweden. Second, single payer, which is what Canada has, is different than government provided health care, which is what Sweden and the UK have. Single payer is when providers, like doctors, hospitals, etc., are paid by the government for services, but the doctors, etc. are still privately run and operated organizations. Meanwhile, the systems that the UK and Sweden have are government provided healthcare systems, in which the doctors, hospitals, etc. are owned and operated (and paid for) by the government. The key difference here is who owns the services - the doctors, etc., or the government. In government run systems, where the healthcare system at all levels is beholden to the national government, you're more likely to see shortages and wait times. However, in a single payer system, where doctors are also running businesses, you're less likely to see shortages and wait times. Also, unlike the American health care system, medical bankruptcy is not a thing in either government provided or single payer systems, because the government controls the cost of care, making it manageable for patients. The US has the least efficient, most expensive, and poorest performing health care system in the OECD. We need to move past private health care to a single payer system.

I had a kidney stone that needed operated on, all free in Canada, took about a week. Costs $10,000 dollar in the states.

Damn, you guys should really be careful about putting Jane's social security number in the end of the video there.

Why can’t some Americans just accept that their healthcare system is very much broken and learn from other countries? Australia has an objectively better system, and the health spending is only 8% of our GDP, rather than the 16% of the US. It’s time to abandon the idea that privatisation is always better. It simply is not true.

Canadians overwhelmingly support our healthcare system. I can't believe the sums of money that people who don't have insurance and are are very ill (for example cancer) need to pay to receive treatment. If 300 million people all pay into it the cost will be low. You may not need it now but you or a family member might one day. And you'll be happy you don't need to re mortgage your home for treatment .

I came here because I thought it said single player. :(

Thanks for explaining the ups and the downs in this. I hate it when people try to weasel by the costs and risks, like that the SP system can still deny things as an insurance company can.

Sarah, your narration is great! Also, I love the animations.

ill agree with most healthcare ideas that abolish private insurance companies

1:44 "Who knows what could be next ? 😊 " .... Me watching this video 3 years after it was posted. 😩

38% of Canadians are satisfied with their health care? What poll was that?In 2016 the Globe and Mail reported: "A majority of people surveyed in every region of the country said they would agree to tax hikes in exchange for more services being placed under the rubric of publicly funded care. That ranged from a high of 70 per cent in favour in British Columbia to a low of 53.6 per cent in favour on the Prairies."So the "major changes" that Canadians want is more taxes for more health services. So they have and want even more socialized medicine.

Totally informative! Great visual metaphor too; beautifully shows why the current system of healthcare is so complicated, and why people need guidance in determining what they're eligible for.

Being from the UK, it is literally amazing that Americans don't want state funded healthcare

where was the "explanation" ? your college girl reporter seems to have missed that part. Nice job Vox

Here in the UK, consultants from Kaiser Permanente were used to improve the NHS.. Free market + gov health care is a wise choice so long as the health care market can remain profitable, also promoting innovation+incentive, and evolve into a better service. So, as long as a single payer system and a capitalist market can work together, the health care market will thrive.

"Works well" 38-44-62% satisfaction rate There's only one instance here where people are truly satisfied with the state of their system. I'm not sure what the problem in Sweden is but yeah, we need major changes in Canada (nevermind there's no complete uniformity in how care is delivered throughout the country - BC has a health tax, for instance).

Thank God for Vermont! I hope Vermont can be very successful in implementing single-payer health care. The United States gets bad feedback and reviews on their health care because it is a bad system. It seems like if you want to get a procedure done you have to go through the doctor, the billing receptionist, and your health care provider. This process can involve a lot of time on hold during a phone call and sometimes you even have to wait for letters to get reviewed then faxed back and forth. The video shows other countries that have single-payer health care and how their citizens like it a lot more compared to the United States health care. Yes there is some down falls to it like more government control and they get to pick and choose what will be covered. That's nothing though compared to what Americans go through now with their health care. Most of the time it seems like you still have to pay a lot out of pocket when your insurance says you are covered. Is single-payer health care the best solution? I don't that for sure. Evidence does show that people are more satisfied with it in the video. Also with the messed up situation we have in the U.S. this could be the right step to take to find a better solution then we have now.

I feel betrayed by myself. Only watched this thinking it was a guide on how to be an expert in single player games.

I know next to nothing about the system... but peripherally... it seems that under single payer the consumer base expands exponentially. Most people who don’t seek care likely don’t bcus they either can’t afford insurance or their premiums and deductibles are too high. Taxing the public seems to be the obvious answer. Break the rates into categories: richest folks pay the most into the system. Folks w/ larger families must also contribute more to balance out their kids or retired elders. Tax the hell out of corporations & wallstreet. And getting rid of all the greedy middle men - lobbyists, insurers, hospitals - will alleviate much of the burden.

Single payer health care does work when its in a whole country example: Canada. But if for example if single payer health care passes in one state like where I live Colorado then it will either have to raise taxes immensely to keep paying doctors the same or they will move out of the state to another where it pays better.

Pretty clear explanation thanks and thanks for covering potential issues with this system as well. Trying to learn more about it, especially how much money this would cost to implement in the US

Omg the voice fry!! But thanks for the info.

Outsiders are very frightened of waiting times in single payer systems. What isn't mentioned is the reality that most waiting lists are made up of people who would fare no better if the test or treatment were done more quickly. It is empowering in the US system, to make your own diagnosis and find your own consultant and quickly have the test you have seen advertised. It may seem an unnecessary step to require a visit to a family physician for a headache before having a referral to a subspecialist. And it may seem backwards when your family physician prescribes an older drug that is better tested, much less expensive and often less toxic compared to the glossy options you see advertised. As an outsider, you have no way of knowing what represents good value and what doesn't. As an insider, I can say that I am very happy to have access to a single payer system.

it took a lot of effort BUT single payer healthcare in nederland [including kids up to 18 years of age] cost me about 170 usd a month but has a max copay of 400 usd a year the same coverage in the usa will cost me over 2200 usd a month excluding all extra costs so if i have a car crash with broken bones ,hospital stay ,physical therapy ect in january get cancer treatment with operations , medication etc in april , need to go for dental care and eye glasses in may ,get heart surgery in augustus , and mental care for my depression in oktober with weekly counseling till december and even if my kids suffer the same fate our max cost would be 12 X 170 usd + 400 usd = 2440 usd and i get to choose the doctors and hospitals etc i get treatment from/at oh and before i would forget my job would be protected by law and all those months in hospital would mean i suffer a whopping net loss of 0 usd in income and i get to keep/spend my 37 payed vacation days that year how is this bad again for the average american ?

Or make healthcare an open market system and make us, the consumers, know the actual prices of operations before we have them so we can encourage competition and reduce prices across the board.

We should definitely decrease our military spending

The U.S. Veterans health care system is single payer I believe. I don't want to be under that kind of system. I went to a Veterans hospital once and that was enough. Never again.

In america you have an example of single payer and its called the VA (Veterans Affairs) and how is that working for you?

I was looking for a good explanation, but when this valley girl started yapping, I knew she knew nothing about what she was about to "lecture me about"

This video presents single payer as a fix for the wastefulness of redundant billing departments in doctor's offices. There are billing departments in many, many businesses in many industries. That isn't the reason our healthcare costs are as high as they are. The costs are high because people aren't spending their own money on health services. Nobody has any idea what it costs to fix a broken bone or perform an appendectomy. Of course costs will rise! Now, consider this question: what does laser eye surgery cost? If you don't know, you can actually google for a reasonable answer, but most people with bad vision have a good idea of the cost. It turns out that most health insurance doesn't cover that surgery, so people typically pay out of pocket. Over the course of 15 years, the cost hasn't even kept pace with inflation! Plastic surgery is a similar story.

"From each according to his ability to each according to his need" - that's how it works. SICK

In regards to the wait times...... it's purposeful. We can have shorter wait times, it's just that when weighing the cost benefit ratio of raising taxes to improve wait times, it's repeatedly decided not to be worth it. Pay more, get shorter wait times. Canada does its best to find the best middle ground between cost and efficiency.

Wait, am I understanding this correctly? So under single-payer health care, if I get injured or sick, I essentially pay 0% of the medical bills?

To those who thumb down this video, if you get cancer should we all watch while your family goes bankrupt? Should we watch while your family ends up starving and homless to pay for your medical bills? If your child gets cancer should we watch you watch your child die because you can't afford treatment? Would you stand by and watch someone else go through that? Is that what it means to be free?

So the argument for is simply: it "possibly" reduce fee because of simplifying administration and it's popular in other country (despite only 38% likes it in Canada), disregarding that not all those countries are truly single payer and they are all different vastly. Argument against in this video: Vermont failed, these medical for all is freaking expensive. And MA example was to expanding Medicaid, not Medicare for all

Sarah Kilff sounds kind of cool in the way she talks 😆

So I have a question comma I'm trying to learn more about this subject. why do we need the government to be the middleman?

"And it's actually pretty popular elsewhere" Proceeds to show 3 polls with 2 below 50% approval

this is why income tax is also so important - i'm norwegian and i can tell you, it all works together with our health care system. you can't just implement single-payer health care if your population isn't willing to pay a fair share of taxes (looking at you, the 1%). everyone uses taxes as the freakin' boogeyman of scandinavia, but they're not. income tax means you pay what you actually can afford, and the benefits are worth it for the entire society. i'm under the tax limit (as most students are - i study political science btw), so i pay NOTHING, until i CAN pay. i still get the benefits of our health care system - i've been sick a lot, so it's been very important to me, and to my single mother who had to raise a sick child and got sick herself, without ever going into debt or struggling financially with it.

I can properly testify for this by showing Norway's fairly high satisfaction level.

People in the comments saying "Americans live longer" lol let's have a look at life expectancy : USA : 79.3 yrs - 31st rank Canada : 82.2 - 12th UK : 81.2 - 20th France & Sweden : 82.4 - 9th

1. You didn't explain why it works, you just said what it is 2. You didn't say anything about how much it will cost in taxes 3. You didn't explain why our current system doesn't work 4. You didn't explain why our current healthcare is so expensive There is so much missing from this and so much here is just wrong.

Everybody pays a 3% payroll tax matched by employers ? NOBODY has to pay medical insurance or bills ? Sound like a good deal ?

I found much of what Sarah Kliff to be interesting. I didn’t necessarily agree with her, but I found it to be thought-provoking none-the-less. She explained our healthcare system now as “a system of tubes that run through many different levels (government to state to city to hospital…etc) in order to get to where it’s supposed to be going. She explains that there are people paying many different rates for the same coverage and attempted to explain why it should be changed to a system more similar to other countries like Canada and Sweden and have a single-payer system. Now what she was trying to say was a respectable attempt at trying to prove her point, but the thought of universal healthcare or a more simplified version of the healthcare system we have now is always going to be a more attractive idea to those that don’t have it. Healthcare systems like that have many issues of their own. Patients have longer waits to receive care and are statistically receiving a much lower quality of care than the care that is being received by those who pay for their healthcare. Though I agree that there being many different options and costs for healthcare is problematic, and the fact that people are paying different amounts for the same coverage isn’t ideal, I still don’t believe a single-payer healthcare is a viable option. Many jobs would be lost in creating a system like that and the American economy would be changed dramatically. As she explained, the one state (Vermont) that wished to change its healthcare system to one more similar to that of the single-payer system had to raise 3 billion dollars in order to fund it. This will most likely be done through raising taxes. If the United States as a whole decided that this was the route they should take they would have to raise a whopping 150 billion dollars, or more! This is simply not an option. It is a good thought, and yes the healthcare system that we have now is far from flawless, but a single-player health care system is far from a better solution to our nation’s problem.

"Its actually pretty popular elsewhere" *shows canada barely over 1/3 satisfaction rate*

Very interesting topic, but that Vocal fry just threw me off. Eugh.

I am originally from country which have Government run healthcare. It's Nepal. To get just a Doctor's appointment, we have to wait at least 3 to 4 months. And often doctor refers patient to go to private clinic for fast service. And I have friends in Canada experiencing a same problem. So to be short Government involving in healthcare never works. Let insurance be available through free market economy.

People from Canada that gets diagnosed with cancer is put in the back of the line. Most end up dying after they were diagnosed before they can even see a doctor. Politicians and the rich still get top priority health care. Like Martin Short said he loves Canadian health care. When his wife came down sick and because as rich as they are she was moved ahead of everyone . That is your single paid health care. The poor that lives in countries complain about single pay health care. Their family members has died because of being shoved to the back of the line because of their poverty level. So before spouting off lies why not take time and go seek the truth,

The next step in health care is single payer. The Supreme Court ruling opened the way for single Payer. Businesses and the Chamber of Commerce will wake up and see Obamacare as a burden on them.

Couldn't get passed 18 seconds because of the basic vocal fry.

The biggest reason we don't already have it is health insurance is a huge industry with a powerful lobby. Single payer would basically eliminate that entire economic sector.

8 years ago, wow, nothing has changed

This was a deeply uninformative video.

terrible explaination

It's not the debt it's the interest rates paid out of peoples pockets is the direct problem!

Good luck getting those elective surgeries under single payer, tge NHS sets records month after month for longest waiting periods for electives like knee surgery.

Vocal fry on this chicks voice, can't take her serious

This is where the American Healthcare system needs to go

not being sarcastic but someone (preferably with a college degree) please explain what happens the health insurance industry? by changing the middle man to a more streamlined one where do all those people who make their living off working for the insurance companies go? will the medical plan department of those companies just completely disappear? I don't see why they would still exist since it's a single payer system. genuinely curious.

I'm surprised no one's jumped in the series of tubes reference

The narrator's vocal fry ruined this video! Ugh.

If single payer is the answer why do citizens from those countries fly to the US to have procedures done?

Health care without government must be recognized as a human right. We don't need this contamination tainting our care.

Yes, it will take a lot of maple syrup to pay for Vermont's system.And no, medicare does not pay all of the medical bills for people over 65.They have to purchase insurance to fill in the gaps not covered by medicare.

Vocal fry

America's healthcare system is rated the worst and the most expensive. Well...you tell me if it is good or not.

To be fair, the UK and Canadian systems are not directly comparable. In the UK almost all hospitals are publicly-run (even if the buildings if not exactly publicly-owned, but that's another story), while I don't think this is so in Canada.

big kudos to Bran Dougherty-Johnson on the animation of these vids!

BERNIE 2016

I believe you inaccurately titled this video. It should have been " A two minute one sided and biased view on single payer health care"

It works like the Costco system were your money goes into a tube and you purchase groceries. However in this model the government forces you to put your money in the tube and you get nothing in return.

38% satisfaction in Canada is fairly low, and 44% is just around half the country in Sweden. The U.S. healthcare system being unpopular doesn’t mean other systems are “pretty popular,” it makes them slightly less unpopular. Clearly no system is perfect, and there’s always going to be trade offs.

About waiting times: Does that include people who aren't able to see a doctor because they can't afford it?

A better video would be: How single-payer health care works, in 3 minutes. Maybe touch on how it saves money on a national scale, how expensive the USA's system is currently, and how everyone gets covered, and explain that it is an expensive system, but the majority of people who live in a country with single payer pay exponentially less than they would under a privatized system. Maybe debunk a few myths about it too, such as all single payer systems lead to increased wait times, and the myth that "it's impossible to pay for" (Yes, people actually think that, such as ted cruz and many republicans)

So the only problem with single payer is if the govt didn't raise enough taxes and can only fund certain procedures and deny others? Even if there was enough money, what's to say it wouldn't all just be allocated to the military when the budget's announced? And how is delayed care (or worse, no care) better than expensive care?

Well in the UK we have the NHS which is more or less the single payer system your talking about.

How to fix health care in America 1, better quality medicine and treatment 2, 'medicine menus'. Patients should know the prices of EVERYTHING before they are billed or before they are even admitted to a hospital, giving them more a chance to choose what hospital they go to 3, more options under insurance for natural medicine and treatments 4, if doctors are caught lobbying for medication they lose their license for life and must pay reparations for any unnecessary complications or added prescriptions of patients 5, public donations for those who cannot afford needed treatment 6, single payer health care with non-mandatory insurance

As a Canadian I know how long the wait times are but they will give you the service that you need we had an American student who recently moved to Canada and we told him the truth that in the us if you don't have the money the doctor will not provide any service other than to kick you out he believed state run hospitals will give you service they do not if you don't have the money man did that blow him mind anyway here's a question do you want the government who has a vested interest in keeping American's alive or a private doctor who get's paid anyway

Zero competition to lower costs in the private sector. Government contracts will be lobbied. There will be a monopoly on every aspect of the Healthcare Industry. And we all know how efficient government spending is.

I believe the US health care system needs overhauled. My experience and others can testify that their is a fundamental lack of honesty in billing patients and insurance companies. For example, I was told by the hospital that my out-patient hernia operation would cost $3k if I paid up front (not counting doctor and anesthesia). I paid it. Three days after the operation, they sent me a bill for $10k. After I threatened legal action, they withdrew the charges. This happened twice, a different hospital the second time. That amount totaled over $40k for a simple, out-patient routine operation. The system is beyond broken, it's extortion at its finest. Mob territory. Criminal, felonious.

It says Vermont will save money from this but also says it's MORE expensive?

Whay you said about medicare is not true...you have to pay monthly premiums for it.

The healthcare could get much better if there was just less government. I mean the regulations here drive up healthcare costs thousands of dollars and the taxes drive out small insurance companies leaving monopolized healthcare. Also when you have a single payer system, it is much like college where government is giving you loans and now college is raising tuition cause the consumer is no longer paying them directly. This simply raises costs.

There is a lot of confusion in this "explanation".

Free market could come in handy though. We should convince all doctors and pharmacists to move away from insurance altogether.

HOW DOES SINGLE-PAYER HEALTH CARE WORK?

Graphics are on point as usual but the narration... needs some work.

Here my proposal: The Government give out Reimbursable Vouchers or Coupons on the amount of the average cost of Health insurance. If the person chooses an insurance that cost's less than the voucher, they may keep the change as pocket cash. If they want to be fancy they can just pay the difference. This way everybody gets insurance, there is competition to keep premiums down, individual freedom is preserved and it cost the government all the same.

So the government deciding what to pay for is worse than insurance companies deciding that?

God... That vocal fry is killing me

I live in Denmark and i had a friend, who's dad got a rare skin eating bacteria that took mounths in hospital to get rid of. That would've been 200000$... They didn't pay a thing

Vox chose a county that had a high level of voters for trump while also staying in the same demographics in the same area for people with insurance from the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. One of the first things I noticed in this video was that even people that had the education and information to know that Obamacare was the ACA, still gave their vote for Trump knowing that he had intentions on repealing the very insurance coverage that they depended on. In this town, there was multiple people who were either uneducated about what exactly Obamacare was; not knowing that the Affordable Care Act was literally just another name for Obamacare. There were also the ones that knew and still blindly put their faith in someone who stated that they would be removing their coverage. One thing mentioned was that although Trump stated multiple times during his campaign that he had plans to repeal the ACA, there were multiple people who were educated on the issue (such as the women signing her community up for healthcare through the ACA) that still voted for him in a blind denial that he “Wouldn’t actually do something like that”. Another issue that was common among some of the ill-informed townspeople was that they agreed that the cost of Obamacare was too much and that Trump would lower that cost with whatever new program he came up with to replace Obamacare even though he has never given a set plan on what that replacement would be. The residents that didn’t mind this insurance and the coverage that came with it, just wanted a more affordable version of it, and no penalty for not being about to afford the outrageous amounts that they are basically being forced to pay. Many of the residents had the same main issue with Obamacare, that the name was linked to a President that they did not support. What I got from this was that there are many people out there that are fine ethically with taking a gamble that can potentially uninsured millions if it is not replaced with a plan that is either better or at least at the same capacity as our current plan. When Obama answered the question on how he feels about the ACA he readily admitted that it was not perfect and that there were many things that could be fixed in it if everyone was to work together and improve the current plan instead of scrapping the full thing and having nothing for the citizens of America.

The United States government receives yearly tax revenues of approximately $3.5 trillion . Raising the minimum wage to appropriate living wage will induce spending and create a better economy and spend less money on our welfare system. The United States spends approximately $718.69 billion yearly on its military. If we can drop that ridiculous number, we save enough money for more important things. Lastly, when the 1% and the wealthy start paying their fair share of taxes, that revenue will bring in more money. This is just some of the ways we pay for it. There's more.

I'm for a single payer Health Care System...which seems like what "Obamacare" would ultimately become... but also mixed in with Privatized for those who NEED care that can't be provided by the Single Payer System (if need be)...THOUGH the Privatized Insurance would have to be cheaper then what it has been in the past, because they wouldn't be needing to cover AS MUCH anymore...since they'd mainly be covering the overflow from the Single Payer System

0:48 "It's actually pretty popular elsewhere" Canada has 38% saying it works well in the infograph #doublethink

As a former cancer patient, this is bullshit. If i was in Canada i would literally be dead right now.

Vernmont abandoned the plan in december of that year

And it didn’t work in Vermont because people would’ve been paying more which is also why California did not do it

There's a reason that people come to America when they need major surgery done. America has the best trained doctors in the world because of our non-public health care. I think a better solution to a single payer system is to have a voucher system. It covers small/common stuff, but you still need private insurance for things like cancer and preventable diseases

Have you noticed the potholes in the streets; the cracks and bridges that are failing; the crumbling infrastructure? The same people responsible for our infrastructure will be running YOUR healthcare. I have govt. healthcare; I am dropping it for private insurance. The services are reduced for lack of reimbursement and it leaves your health in a declining position. When the government can take care of their current responsibilities, then we can talk.