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Politics : Actual left/right wing discussion -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: cirrus who wrote (52)	9/6/2006 11:04:02 AM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10087

In terms of health care... the govt run Veterans Administration delivers most cost effective health care available in America by far. Medicare administrative expenses are a fraction of what private sector administrative expenses are. How much more efficient is the private sector Not very, if you listen to various advocacy groups, which are fond of promoting programmes they like by claiming that their administrative costs are much lower than those in the private sector. You often hear this comparison made between Medicare and private health insurance, with advocates claiming that Medicare only has administrative costs of 2%. Now Ampersand of Alas, a Blog, offers the same justification of government transfer programmes versus private charity. Accounting is so boring no one wants to talk about it, and yet it's crucial to get it right. And in cases like these, the studies are generally getting it very wrong. Comparing government numbers to private sector numbers isn't even apples to oranges; it's apples to fruitflies. For starters, the private sector--whether they be charities or corporations--has to collect and track the money they spend. So does the government--but unlike the private sector, that figure doesn't get charged off against, say, Medicare; it gets charged to the auditor's office, the IRS, the Treasury, the justice department, and so forth. (Social security does track the money you send them, but the IRS, not their legal department, is the enforcer.) Also, it is often very, very hard to tell what something costs a government agency. They don't pay cash prices for a lot of the services they get, and they don't do normal corporate things like accruing their pension liabilities, so it's hard to know what their true compensation costs are. Government agencies also--obviously--don't have big finance sections to tell them how much they need to pay in taxes. That doesn't mean they're more efficient at delivering services; it just means that they don't pay taxes. We could achieve the same "efficiency"--and many others besides--by eliminating the corporate income tax. Apparently (I haven't read the studies myself) when you add in those sorts of costs, the government's administrative costs are higher than the private sector's. That won't suprise anyone who's ever spent time in line at the DMV. janegalt.net We need to think very carefully before we abandon what has worked well for a generation. The siren song of "privatization" is not without considerable risk, risk that in my opinion has not been adequately considered. The fact that a change might not work well can be considered risk, and be used to argue against change. OTOH the current system also might not work well, in fact it is very unlikely to work well going forward. We don't have a safe current system to compare to a risky modified or "privatized" one. We have a problematic current system to compare to a potentially problematic modified or new system.

To: cirrus who wrote (52)	9/6/2006 11:20:38 AM
From: michael97123	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 10087

There is much risk in privatization as discussed on this thread. There are certainly ways to minimize that risk. Cowboy investing as proposed by this admin wont work imho but neither will the algore lockbox/head in the sand route. Cudos to bush for making this an issue. I would like to say cudos to the dems for finding a reasonable solution but i cant. While we are talking SS, we should also talk universal healthcare. Costs are so out of hand these days, that we have reached the point that single payers time might be coming. Just like with SS, there should be no lockbox/head in the sand status quo approach. Here the republicans are like the democrats are with SS--just yelling status quo forever. Interesting that one system will be saved by some form of private accounts and the other may have to be saved by some form of government program akin to SS. Progressive solutions to problems can come from either sector and from either party.