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Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (4071)	1/19/2008 6:46:02 PM
From: Katelew	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 42652

The few things I've read regarding turning the US into a single-payer system has these premises: Right now approx. 16% of the population is uninsured, thus they're not paying anything right now. The rest of the population is getting its coverage from employers who pay for them or from individually-purchased policies. Medicaid is excluded from these numbers for the purpose of argument. If the govt. became the insurer, employers and self-insured would continue paying premiums...but to the government instead. The proposal is NOT to have the government provide free health insurance. Because the government could give the same quality of coverage we have now for LESS money (the middle-man insurer is eliminated)....for about 20% less is the working assumption.....that 20% difference in money would cover the 16% who are currently uninsured. The argument, thus, is that a single-payer system can pay for itself by collecting the same amount of premiums and still achieve universal coverage. Trying to achieve universal coverage thru the private insurance market, on the other hand, is going to be more expensive and will most likely require subsidizing the poor with additional tax-payer money. This is the basic argument. The devil of course is always in the details <gg>. Have a great evening!!