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Politics : Mainstream Politics and Economics -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bread Upon The Water who wrote (9538)	2/17/2012 1:14:17 AM
From: Little Joe	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 85487

"I think where we could make a real savings on universal health care is to get the insurance companies out of the business. If we are going to have universal health care why do we now need them? An extra layer of bureaucracy that has to extract a profit from the system." Well if we have universal health care, you are correct we do not need insurance companies, and lets agree for the sake of argument that there will be a savings, but against that savings will be the huge cost of the agencies created in this bill. As I have repeatedly mentioned there are over 100 agencies with vaguely defined guidelines, created. While I am not a great believer in government ingenuity, nobody tops the government when it comes to spending a lot of money and getting little for it. Now if you believe this universal health system will be efficiently run by our government given its track record. I suppose you have the better argument. I on the other hand am a realist and ask myself, given the track record, what is the chance of this occurring. You and I can argue about this forever. What I would like to see is universal coverage, a free market and other ideas that we are hearing from the republicans offered as options in several states so we could get some real in the field practical results. Then we might have a better idea of what works and end this debate based on facts instead of opinions. As big as America is, I see no reason why it cannot be tried. Surely it would be a better idea that forcing the country into a huge boondoggle. lj

To: Bread Upon The Water who wrote (9538)	2/17/2012 9:42:50 AM
From: sm1th	1 Recommendation Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 85487

the need to make a PROFIT You are badly uninformed about health insurance. In about 15 states, only non-profits can offer health insurance. MA has the highest insurance costs in the country, and only allows non-profits. Insurance co profits are not a big factor, but they make good sound bites for politicians and the ignorant masses.

To: Bread Upon The Water who wrote (9538)	2/17/2012 6:01:20 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 85487

One also has to remember that the cost of private insurance includes the need to support insurance companies bureaucracies (claims adjusters etc.) and the need to make a PROFIT Government provided insurance also comes with overhead. The government does get economies of scale, and avoids the part of the charge that represents profit (as do non-profit insurance companies) but it also doesn't get the competition and desire for profit that drive attempts to lower costs. A number of estimates show Medicare as having a much lower overhead cost, but those estimates distort the picture a bit, they don't count government costs outside of the Medicare program, they do count private companies taxes as costs on the private side, they are a cost to the company, but not a net cost to the whole system (unless your considering the dead weight loss of taxes, and considering that isn't good for the government side of the equation at all), and they are a cost on the companies imposed by the government). In any case insurance company overhead isn't a very big portion of the total healthcare expense in this country. Bring it to zero (which of course is impossible) and you still don't get rid of the fact that we have high and growing costs.