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Politics : Mainstream Politics and Economics
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To: Bread Upon The Water who wrote (9538)2/17/2012 6:01:20 PM
From: TimF  Read Replies (2) of 85487
 
One also has to remember that the cost of private insurance includes the need to support insurance companies bureaucracies (claims adjusters etc.) and the need to make a PROFIT

Government provided insurance also comes with overhead. The government does get economies of scale, and avoids the part of the charge that represents profit (as do non-profit insurance companies) but it also doesn't get the competition and desire for profit that drive attempts to lower costs.

A number of estimates show Medicare as having a much lower overhead cost, but those estimates distort the picture a bit, they don't count government costs outside of the Medicare program, they do count private companies taxes as costs on the private side, they are a cost to the company, but not a net cost to the whole system (unless your considering the dead weight loss of taxes, and considering that isn't good for the government side of the equation at all), and they are a cost on the companies imposed by the government).

In any case insurance company overhead isn't a very big portion of the total healthcare expense in this country. Bring it to zero (which of course is impossible) and you still don't get rid of the fact that we have high and growing costs.
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