Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: KyrosL who wrote (214481)	1/24/2007 7:38:02 PM
From: neolib	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

The claim is hardly startling. It's based on the fact that single payer systems in other advanced industrialized countries are on the average 50% cheaper than our system in the US in terms of cost as a GDP percentage. Normalized for service?? If not they are worthless comparisons. What I read about for Canada & the UK are horrendous waiting periods, as well as refusal to try many advanced therapies. You get what you pay for. Various studies have estimated that the private insurance system we have in the US spends somewhere between 20 and 30% of every health care dollar on a bureaucracy whose main purpose is to screen applicants for pre-existing conditions and "supervise" the health care providers. This is indeed a valid argument, but not against for profit insurance vs. non-profit. This is an argument against requiring 100% of the population to carry insurance vs allowing people to only sign up when they want it (i.e. once they have a major problem). There should be absolutely no confusing as to the issue here. To repeat, insurance is about spreading statistical risk of unlikely events. It is NOT about wealth transfer for known events. Why is this concept ignored by some many? Another large percentage is consumed in unnecessary procedures, tests and drugs designed to maximized health care provider profits rather than optimize the patient's health. Flat out false. The insurance industry tries to minimize payments to health care providers, not maximize providers profits. You switch from one side of the system to the other without thinking about it. And a further huge percentage is spent caring for advanced conditions among the uninsured that would have been caught and prevented or cured at a much lower cost, if they were insured. Perhaps true but I don't know the #s. There is the issue in general of cost of prevention including lifestyle changes vs. cost of treatment. Again, this has nothing to do with either single payer, or for profit vs. non-profit insurance. What I'm asking is the relative efficiency of single entity, non-profit, insurance coverage, vs. multiple for profit insurance companies with the fraction of population covered, as well as policy coverage held constant. That is the only sensible way to ask the question. I claim that multiple, for-profit companies win this hands down, for very well known reasons of competitive systems.