A 3.5B profit is what CEO David Wichmann is interested in protecting, along with this salary of $17,389,976. United does not care about your physician relationship, for examples, see below from Healthcare Finance and the American Council of Finance and Health

https://www.healthcarefinan...
WHAT HAPPENED

UnitedHealthcare sent out an advanced notice to more than 700 hospitals that its emergency room contractor, Envision Healthcare, could be out of network starting January 1, 2019.

WHY IT MATTERS

Dissolving the contract is expected to result in more "surprise bills" for patients who are unaware that their ER doctor, anesthesiologist or radiologist is out-of-network for their insurance coverage.

The Department Of Justice Believes United Healthcare Is Defrauding Medicare
https://www.acsh.org/news/2...

I agree with everything you said. Look at who owns the tallest building in each of the major cities. They are owned by insurance companies who really are just middlemen but are earning more than the providers of service and increasing the cost on the insured.

I absolutely 100% agree. I am all in favor of giving back my healthcare to the physicians and eliminating the for profit middlemen such as United Healthcare, Humana, etc. I honestly don't know what these organizations do to help me. They negotiate with clinics, hospitals, pharmacies ... Medicare could do the same at a lower cost.

Medicare INP deductible for 2019 is 1364.00, not cheap for elderly on a fixed income. Part B premium monthly is 135.50 to 460.00, plus a 185.00 deductible. Part B testing/ER/physician office visits are 20% copay per visit. It gets pricey. My retired military spouse pays no monthly premium, we do not go to VA facilities because of the long wait times for care. We go to private clinics, physicians and urgent care and pay 20% copay plus a 500 deductible per year each and receive excellent care. VA care would be similar to Medicare for all with no say in care plans, long waits for tests and decisions made without any input from the pt. Most Americans would not like the type of care our veterans in the VA system tolerate.

A single government-run plan provides insurance coverage for all Americans. It means I would pay nothing out of the pocket when I go to the doctor. American voters want this. Currently my employer's plan keeps going up, up, up while what it covers keeps going down, down, down.

Why do you assume you’d pay nothing out of pocket? Our current Medicare patients pay copays and deductibles, small as they may be.

While everyone seems to look at the "evil" insurance companies, we should look at who is really driving up costs of health care. By far, about 4 times as many, CMS denies claims more than all the other insurance companies. CMS reimbursement to health care facilities is abysmal. Most times they don't cover the actual cost of delivering the care or just barely cover that cost but you need an army of people to handle the paperwork for them. The health care organizations that have high amounts of people on some sort of government plan are going broke. While there are ways to maximize what you get out of these plans it takes millions to invest in a way to get there. You sure don't get that money back very quickly.
Everyone thinks "Medicare for all" would be so great because you wouldn't have out of pocket but within years of this happening, the actual care part of health care will be horrible. Long wait times, smaller clinics and facilities closing due to not enough money to stay open, you will have to live in a highly populated area just to be able to go to a hospital as the smaller community hospitals will be closed. I think there is way to much focus on the insurance side and not how can we make sure health care stays actually affordable but is delivered to what the people have come to expect. Expectations in the US are that you can show up at an ER at 3 am for a sore throat and get seen in 20 minutes with a magic cure, that if you need a pacemaker you get it within 2 hrs of arriving at a hospital. These things will not happen, you will have longer wait times and if those delivering the care are making less money, they will not be as happy to be there for you at 3am when you are complaining of abdominal pain while eating dorritos and drinking a 2 liter of Mtn Dew.
people need to look at the bigger picture when looking for solutions, not some feel good solution that has horrible long lasting effects across the broader system. What I'm saying is, you can have everyone covered by government sponsored insurance but that won't increase actual access to health care.

VA is a Single Payer plan. Long wait times, little or no choice about services and care plan. So we as retired military use providers outside the VA and have a copay. Arbitrary decisions as in one has to agree to regular meds delivered via mail monthly instead of using a pharmacy, and with a copay if one is retired military..or pay full price.

Exactly. And if you live in a rural area, good luck getting to use any of your VA benefits without a 2 hour + drive to the nearest larger VA facility. Getting to us those VA benefits at a local hospital? good luck getting that approved, even in emergent situations they will deny. They have made improvements but it is really not the way veterans should be treated and it wouldn't fly with the general public who feel entitled to everything now and everything free.

Single payer government run system because the government does things sooo well? Doesn't matter if Dems or Republicans in charge, they make a mess of everything. The healthcare system is far from perfect now but give the government control and see what happens. Plus, can someone tell us how this "Medicare-for-all" will be paid for?

It's paid for by an increase of taxes. You still pay for healthcare, but an average American family will pay much less long term and not up front, when the service is actually needed. I currently work in healthcare finance, and we have patients daily who are expected to cover $100,000 for medical services completely out of pocket.
I agree with you that the Government taking ownership of something is not always the right solution, but it's clear our current system is broken when people are dying daily from an inability to purchase medicine, and their own insurance companies are making a billion dollar profit year over year.

So if you are in finance in healthcare, how do you propose making our friends at CMS actually pay what care costs? That is our biggest issue in hospitals across the nation. So call safety net hospitals are always needing $50million plus every year in uncompensated care, denial of payment from CMS is automatic, rural smaller facilities are unable to stay open with the people on medicare coming in. There have been more changes for the worse than the better in this regard. Giving more people so called "coverage" and taking away facilities to actually get care is not going to help the situation.

Exactly. The government never makes things that are complicated better.

I've heard the Medicare for all argument -- Don't buy it -- People are being led to believe Medicare is free ; it is now being compared to Employer sponsored HC insurance. There has been no mention of Medicare cost to the subscriber or the necessary GAP insurance required to compare the 2. I believe our Socialist friends are trying to mislead the uninformed public. In the end there will NOT be a good outcome if they are implement this.
Can you imagine the potential fallout of this -- "easy if you try"

You're full of baloney. No one thinks it's free but we all know what we pay now for 'private' insurance. Medicare is better run and patients have better outcomes. If that's "socialism," sign me up.

If Gasoline was free everyone would drive more right? If healthcare is "free" or just another government service, there will be no check on its usage and costs will skyrocket, necessitating ever greater taxes. There will be less choice (freedom), because the government will have to limit the use of the resource by rationing. I'm all for "single payer" -- The Patient! We just need to let the free market determine what the price should be for services, not the price controlled environment of the medicare fee schedule. Some simple steps that could get us there:
1) require employees to have HSA's
2) make it illegal for employers to pay for health insurance premiums (thus all insurance would be portable and owned by the patient)
3) Allow insurance to be sold across state lines ( like car insurance)
4) Require disclosure of all fees by hopitals and doctors on government controlled web-site so patients could shop - must also disclose if insurers are getting discounts for said services
5) End medicare price controls- they can reimburse whatever they want, they shouldn't be allowed to determine my value as a physician.
6) End "not-for-profit" monopolies, make everyone (including hospital systems) pay taxes.
This would allow everyone who works to get a better deal. States would continue to run Medicaid for the poor, but I bet they would have to reimburse at a more fair market rate. Also could make charity care deductible directly off AGI, this would encourage more providers to care for the disadvantaged.
Matthew Fornefeld, M.D.

If Medicare raised their reimbursement schedules (and I think they should every time I see a statement that shows what the doctor/clinic/hospital is charging and what is actually reimbursed. By raising the reimbursement rates would that then fall on the insurance companies to earn less because they would have to pay more to the providers. Or would this increase be passed along to the patient by raising the premiums and thereby keep the insurance company profits at such an obscene amount. Of course there isn't a simple answer.