If the country goes to a Single Payer Healthcare system GDP 15%

[EVDebs]

right now goes to healthcare. Duplication by various HMOs and the accompanying overhead would be, hopefully, saved. Consolidations similar to school district consolidations for 'economies of scale' could make things cheaper in the long run.

This is why they teach you that in some cases monopolies are economically preferable. In fact, monopolies are what businesses strive for in the 'free market' if I'm not mistaken...not just settling for oligopolies.

Right now in percentage of US GDP healthcare takes up around 15% and is expected to rise to 19%. Every penny saved is a penny earned.

[brindis_desala]

1. you're exactly correct unfortunately the insurance companies have

a huge club at the ready and we'd need to throw them a bone. But the facts back you up: the United States spends approximately 14% of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on health care while Canada spends about 10% using single payer. The Congressional Budget Office calculated that implementing single-payer in 1991 would have saved the country $225 billion by 2004.
The problem is most Americans have been brainwashed into believing the US has the premier medical system in the world which is simply hogwash if you look at access to medical care and indices like the cost of insurance and the infant mortality rate. What it does have are some of the most sophisticated surgical technology for which the lucky few pay a premium.

[Warpy]

2. 50% of every dollar that a hospital gets is spent on

"administrative overhead" which covers a lot of territory, but mainly means coping with the Byzantine paperwork presented by competing health insurance companies. Just streamlining the paperwork to one form would solve a great deal of the problem driving administrative costs.

Another thing driving costs is the hospitals in the same market, each allied with a different health plan, trying to be all things to all people in that plan, which means a lot of hideously expensive technology is needlessly duplicated. We've overbuilt MRI scanners in this country to the extent that Canada finds it cheaper to send their patients across the border for scans than to build them for their own hospitals.

Even greed pales in comparison to these two things, but the greed of drug companies that advertise their junk directly to patients is not to be underestimated.

A single payer system would end the paperwork nightmare, consolidate services into somewhat more specialized hospitals, and cause drug companies to enter regional bidding for contracts to supply their drugs. Universal coverage would bring the young and relatively healthy into the pool, dropping the overall cost for everyone. Medicaid and Medicare would no longer exist as such, ending even more bureaucracy with its own nightmarish paperwork.

Rationing health care so that only the rich and the well insured can afford it is unconscionably cruel. Ordinary people have been completely priced out of the system, and a severe illness can bankrupt families just from the copays.

Privatization and for profit healthcare can only be an option when illness and injury become consumer decisions; when the rich can luxuriate in multi organ failure needing transplant while the poor make do with a common cold once in a while.

[EVDebs]

3. It seems that all the hospitals in a county have to have MRIs eom

[firefox]

4. What's worse is how it is so rigged.

The insurance companies have it rigged so they get discounts and people that pay cash are charged exorbitant rates. They say people without insurance don't always pay, so those individuals that do pay and do not have insurance get charged out the yin-yang.

[EVDebs]

6. AB 1627 (Fromer - Glendale ) in California makes hospitals list costs

publically, so you can see what each charges for different costs for, say, a certain pill, etc., etc.

""...This bill would establish the Payers' Bill of Rights. The bill
would, beginning July 1, 2004, require a hospital, except a small and
rural hospital, that uses a charge description master, as defined,
to make available a written or electronic copy in accordance with
specified provisions. This bill would also require a hospital to
post a notice, as specified, that informs patients that the hospital'
s charge description master is available pursuant to the specified
provisions.
This bill would require each hospital to compile a list of the
charges for 25 services or procedures commonly charged to patients
and, beginning July 1, 2004, make this list available to any person
upon request.
This bill would authorize any person to file a claim with the
department alleging violation of these provisions, and would require
the department to investigate and inform the complaining person of
its determination whether a violation has occurred and what action it
will take..."


http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/03-04/bill/asm/ab_1601-1650/ab_1627_bill_20030929_chaptered.html

If this happened nationally maybe 'shaming' hospitals into lowering costs to a certain extent would take place. Also, listing the HMO's payouts to CEOs and administrators in 'investigative' journalism (I can dream can't I ?) would go a long long way to cutting the lard out of the present bad system...

It will be a long slog getting to single payer, but we can do it.

[Wilms]

5. Kick n/t