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

To: Road Walker who wrote (10141)	10/5/2009 3:19:15 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

I post a specific claim, that in CEO salary the public option would save money. You dispute that? Yes, you did. And I replied with a list of the counter-costs. I was surprised you had nothing to say about my list.

To: Road Walker who wrote (10141)	10/5/2009 3:23:19 PM
From: i-node	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

that in CEO salary the public option would save money. You dispute that? If you could get the public option without the downsides inherent in it, sure. But it is an all-or-none proposition. Yes, we can get rid of exorbitant CEO salaries, but at the same time we get a government bureaucracy that is less efficient and altogether worse at what it is doing. As a more specific example, the public option will be consumed with fraud and abuse just like Medicare/Medicaid currently are. These are expenditures that are not tolerated by private enterprise. There is no evidence that a public option will even be able to deliver the services we now receive (it is my view it will not). So, how do you compare that? When you consider that Medicare and Medicaid now lose maybe 100 Billion/year to fraud, CEO salaries are literally immaterial in amount. Consider other wasteful government inefficiencies, and it is clear that CEO salaries don't form the basis for an improvement over the current setup.

To: Road Walker who wrote (10141)	10/16/2009 11:23:49 AM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

I guess the claim is true. but its not very meaningful. Add up all the health insurance companies CEO's salaries, and it will be a very insignificant portion of total health care costs. Even toss in their stock option earnings (which perhaps shouldn't be counted because its a cost in dilution to the investors not a direct hit on the companies earnings), and its still tiny. There may be an issue of these CEOs being over-payed, but only an issue for the stockholders, not an issue that's very relevant to the national debate on health care.