Government Healthcare Delivery More Efficient Than Private Sector

[SHRED]

Americans have been asked for decades to disregard basic arithmetic. Americans have been led to believe that private insurance is more efficient than government insurance, Medicare. Americans have been told that somehow “cost of health care” + “healthcare administration cost” is greater than “cost of health care” + “healthcare administration cost” + “advertising” + “profit.”

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2012/12/29/government-healthcare-delivery-more-efficient-than-private-sector/


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Why is this so difficult for some people to grasp (RW family members and friends)?

[pangaia]

1. Teens at grocery checkouts

can't even add or subtract whole numbers. How do we expect certain people to understand something so 'complicated' as your simple arithmetic?

It sure seems to me that if there were Medicare For All, that premium rates should go DOWN. I mean, I am 69, so I speak with a little Medicare experience.

The people who receive the most benefits per person are the ..'elderly!! I am NOT ELDERLY yet.just 69. :&gt
If ALL Americans were insured through 'single payer- MEDICARE.... it would be cheaper..
Of course my oncologist might not get his $580 for my 20 minute visit but, hell, I bet he could live with that.
So, am I missing something here?

[Turbineguy]

2. Why to people believe the rw bs about "gubmint" non-health care?

Well, considering that some didn't even know that Medicare was a government program, would explain a lot. I have found that people will believe all sorts of strange things if they are presented in a religio-philosophical way. As my colleague once put it, "Engineering by Superstition."

It's God's will that they believe this shit. And since God would never want you to believe shit, it can therefore not be shit.

[SHRED]

3. "Engineering by Superstition"...I like that

[dballance]

4. How Shocking. A not for profit system of delivery

is more efficient than a for-profit delivery system? Who would have thunk it? Gees, they probably focus more on quality of care too if I had to wager.

[Scuba]

7. More efficient, even if you take out the private insurance profits.

[Hoyt]

5. Agree. Optimistically, the ACA forces insurers to compete on price and the removal of pre-existing

condition exclusion means we can move from insurer to another to save a few bucks. The Exchanges will help us sort out the more affordable insurers. Eventually, this could force private, for-profit health insurers to either give it up, or become essentially little more than like their Medicare/Medicaid administrative arms, making a few cents off keeping essential data, etc.

Would prefer single payer, or at least a public option, but that is not what we have right now.

In any event, if we really want lower costs, we are going to have to give up MRIs on every corner, the newest drugs that do little more than the older much less expensive drugs, fee choice of any doctor or hospitals, etc. I seriously don't think most Americans are ready for that, although I wish they were. If they were ready, they'd all be insured by Kaiser Permanente or a similar restrictive HMO -- but that would shock most Americans.

[Vox Moi]

6. Why do so many Americans insist on the least efficient system in the world?

I've been a health care researcher for 25 years and have always been dumfounded at the gross inefficiency of the US Health Care System.
When I mention to right-leaning people - including family members - that the US spends more for a lower life expectancy and higher infant mortality that any other developed country they will counter with 'But I know a Canadian who had to wait for a procedure'.
When I discuss the advantages of a single-payer system (not single provider and nothing like socialized medicine) my observations and research are dismissed out of hand as socialism or communism.
It's a triumph of propaganda by the entrenched health care system and their appeals to fabricated issues like death panels and 'choosing your own doctor': issues not existent in any system I know of.
I understand the propaganda. What I do not understand is the eagerness to accept it and the unwillingness to consider other options.

I can't answer this question. Any help out there?

[SHRED]

8. I have found that, in general, conservatives are cowards of thought

They are lazy and cowards in their thinking.
It is much easier for them to accept a wealthy authoritarian's propaganda than actually engage their own critical thinking.

In other words their feelings and superstitions (beliefs) trump their rational thought.
Again, I think they are afraid of leaving the 'comfort' of being lazy thinkers. That they might actually have to challenge themselves is too much work plus it might shatter their beliefs which they have identified with, invested in, and defended very heavily.

[riverbendviewgal]

9. i figure

They watch FOX NEWS like my brother or his daughter who works for Martin Lockheed. I dislike her so much when she, a mother of two, told me she didn't want to pay with her taxes for any other kids health insurance. She felt she works and has her own benefits . She thinks anyone who does not work is lazy.

I find my brother puzzling as he worked a union job. Something happened as he is now retired. I think he was caught not working when he should have been. Or that he hated the minorities that were getting into the union . He hates Obama because Obama is black. He thinks Hannity should be president.