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Politics : A US National Health Care System?
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To: Peter Dierks who wrote (6663)4/13/2009 10:54:02 AM
From: i-node  Read Replies (2) of 42652
 
A 2006 study in the journal Health Affairs concludes that around 17 cents of every dollar in relative reductions in Medicare payments to private hospitals are shifted onto private patients -- and that such cost-shifting accounts for fully 12.3% of the total increase in private payer prices between 1997 and 2001.

This share would be far higher were government payment rates not limited to the elderly and the poor but imposed over the entire system. This will only hasten the flight to government. Meanwhile, employers small and large will have every incentive to dump their plans and transfer their workers to the public rolls. The result will inevitably be a cascade of failures or withdrawals from the market by commercial insurers, with the public option as the only option for the diaspora.

As I've stated here and on the AMD thread repeatedly, this is the fundamental thing that the pro-SGP forces don't understand. You do not save money with this "negotiating" power. You simply cut quality.

Gingrich, yesterday morning, was the first talking head I've seen address the issue and I'm glad to see someone else point it out. Maybe, just maybe, some of those who THINK they want this radical uprooting of our health care can understand the danger inherent in tinkering with a system that works really, really well most of the time.

There is a reason Medicare Part D is functioning better than planned -- and that is because they left a private element in it. If you take the private insurance out of the system you're left solely with a government bureaucracy.
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