Nimbus Couzin wrote:Steve, the 3-5% number you mention (profit) is a number that neglects the huge administrative costs in the private health care system. Have you noticed in a large doctor's office (or a hospital) a lot of people walking around with pieces of paper in their hands, or tapping away at computers? Administrative costs. Huge salaries for "executives" who plot on how to maximize profits? Administrative costs. Glossy photo-shopped advertisements of smiling models in the magazines hawking the latest blue or yellow or red drug? Administrative costs.
Subtract all of the huge admin costs private insurers pile up, and you're still left with 3-5% for them to stuff into their pockets.
These admin costs add up, big time. We're talking about twenty percent in some cases. (that number can vary greatly depending on what you include).
For comparison purposes, here are one set of numbers for private and gov't admin costs:
"This amounts to
7.2 percent of total U.S. health care spending, broken out as
14.1 percent for private insurers and 5.2 percent for public
programs (3.1 percent for Medicare and 7.0 percent for Medicaid)."
Who do you think pays for the big insurance company skyscrapers in every major city? The customers. Do we need paper pushers and skyscrapers? I say no.
What are those numbers that you are quoting? You got a link?
Is it fair to say that you have now revised your position from "Insurance companies are greedy and evil" to "insurance companies are inefficient"?
And about that paperwork... Do you even know where the term "red tape" comes from? Yeah, like the government is going to reduce red tape. Just because you won't see it, doesn't mean that some poor doctor's assistant isn't still filling it out and submitting it. Except under the government plan, the failure to do so would be a criminal matter instead of just a civil dispute. Yeah, that's progress!
And like the government doesn't build buildings! You really like to throw around the red herrings.
Any sane person should be skeptical that government administrative costs are lower than the private market. There is no incentive for a bureaucracy to minimize costs, in fact their incentives all run the other way. If a government manager can grow the budget under his authority, he automatically gets a raise! And at the end of the fiscal year, the various agencies invent ways to spend any of their remaining funds so they don't get reallocated somewhere else. Yeah, that's efficiency right there.
Everyone agrees that health insurance has evolved into a mess since WW2. I've come to believe that it's this way because of government interventions in the marketplace. Adding more entitlements to the already bankrupt Social Security scheme and the soon to be bankrupt Medicaid and Medicare programs while we are already running an annual deficit over $2 trillion is folly.
I joined this thread to break the illusion of unanimous support for this version of healthcare reform, so no one should assume that you must be a hard leftist to be a member of this forum, usual appearances and innuendo to the contrary.
That aside, I'm sure we don't want to go through the whole debate again. So, if you're agreeable, take the last word here. As my pre-response, I'll just refer everyone to the previous thread.