Why Single-Payer Health Care Saves Money
nytimes.com
Why Single-Payer Health Care Saves Money
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Re: Why Single-Payer Health Care Saves Money
#2> One is that administrative costs average only about 2 percent of total expenses under a single-payer program like Medicare, less than one-sixth the corresponding percentage for many private insurers.
That story needs to come with a caveat that Medicare's anti-fraud efforts are covered by law enforcement budgets, namely FBI https://news.google.com/news/search/section/q/medicare%20fra...
Re: Why Single-Payer Health Care Saves Money
#3> One is that administrative costs average only about 2 percent of total expenses under a single-payer program like Medicare, less than one-sixth the corresponding percentage for many private insurers. That story needs to come with a caveat that Medicare's anti-fraud efforts are covered by law enforcement budgets, namely FBI https://news.google.com/news/search/section/q/medicare%20fra...
And that doesn't happen with private companies? There's loads of fraud that goes on there too.
Re: Why Single-Payer Health Care Saves Money
#4I find it hilarious that this article uses state government taking over road maintenance as an analogy and claim it will save money, while it's known that California has a bad reputation in road repair, due to funding problem.
http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-sac-road-funding-prob...
Re: Why Single-Payer Health Care Saves Money
#5Time for the daily confirmation bias on HN! Sponsored contend? I wonder...
Re: Why Single-Payer Health Care Saves Money
#6A big part of this to is drs in places like Canada get training on how to save costs which generally means not providing service. I had to switch to a private system in Canada to get drs who would take a proactive approach.
Re: Why Single-Payer Health Care Saves Money
#7> One is that administrative costs average only about 2 percent of total expenses under a single-payer program like Medicare, less than one-sixth the corresponding percentage for many private insurers. That story needs to come with a caveat that Medicare's anti-fraud efforts are covered by law enforcement budgets, namely FBI https://news.google.com/news/search/section/q/medicare%20fra...
And that doesn't happen with private companies? There's loads of fraud that goes on there too.
Which is why those companies hire entire departments dedicated to fraud. If a government agency stepped in and instead offered to do fraud investigation for free, that would provide a rather nice reduction to their overhead costs.
Re: Why Single-Payer Health Care Saves Money
#8A big part of this to is drs in places like Canada get training on how to save costs which generally means not providing service. I had to switch to a private system in Canada to get drs who would take a proactive approach.
Yea, I am all for more government cost controls, and maybe a public option for a more tiered system. But it seems like universal single payer is not really realistic for the US.
Re: Why Single-Payer Health Care Saves Money
#9I imagine both single-payer and a truly free market health care system would be substantially cheaper than the current system -- which has none of the benefits of either approach.
With the federal government unable to act, turning healthcare back to the states to test a number of different solutions seems entirely reasonable. Let California try single-payer and Texas try something different -- after a few years see if we've found a solution that could work for the whole country.
Re: Why Single-Payer Health Care Saves Money
#10> One is that administrative costs average only about 2 percent of total expenses under a single-payer program like Medicare, less than one-sixth the corresponding percentage for many private insurers. That story needs to come with a caveat that Medicare's anti-fraud efforts are covered by law enforcement budgets, namely FBI https://news.google.com/news/search/section/q/medicare%20fra...
Further it is not a good argument by itself. One could imagine a program with no administrative overhead that because of that lack of administration ended up costing far more than a program with higher administrative overhead. I'm not saying that's the case here, but the argument needs to be made that it isn't.