Daily Kos
Dr. Steve B
2008/11/25

The United States is the only developed country (I will be using this term and the OECD interchangably) that relies on private for-profit insurance companies for a major part of its health care system. We are the only one that has:

A large percentage of our people completely uninsured

A larger percentage of our people UNDERinsured, so that if they do actually get sick, despite thinking they have insurance, their out of pocket cost are so high as to cause them serious financial distress and even bankruptcy.

Our total costs are rising faster than in other developed countries.

Our adminstrative costs, or to be more accurate (what do you mean "we", says Medicare), the adminstrative costs of the for-profit private health insurance companies, are higher then anywhere else.

Without a much greater degree of central planning and purchasing (monospony) just as other OECD countries have, we cannot get to real universal health care coverage.

Despite recent attempts at denial, the above facts both are both true and related.

As health care reform is once again on the national poitical agenda, the latest meme in the campaign to keep Single Payer from even being part of the discussion is that the issue of excess administrative costs due to the private for-profit insurance companies, and the single payer savings potential, are somehow not real and important.  That is false. And you don't have to take a single payer advocates word on it. The most prominent health economist in America, Professor Uwe Reinhardt of Princeton, agrees: our adminstrative costs are indefensible and are part of why our health care costs are the hightest and rising.

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