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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Cogito who wrote (130389)	2/7/2010 5:02:43 PM
From: Lane3	Respond to of 541945

You're correct that many of the big problems we have in our system are related to the fact that there are so many different insurance carriers. A single payer system could be far more efficient. It would, indeed, be more efficient in terms of the overhead of providers. It's ridiculous what they have to go through. It would be considerably less efficient in an economic sense, though, perilously so IMO. I think that a handful of providers would give us the best trade-off. I also think that there are other options for reducing the hardship of interacting with insurance companies. Single-payer may solve that problem but not without sub-optimizing. One can look at any element and see the advantages. If they resonate, sometimes folks don't look so closely at the costs, the unintended consequences, and other downside. There are always trade-offs.