Single payer system would save enough to more than pay for insuring all the uninsured.

[JohnWxy]

in fact you could cover everybody and SAVE money (vs the current system).

From Bill Moyers Journal (again!):


http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/05222009/transcript2.html

BILL MOYERS: But then let's establish what single-payer is. Can you do that succinctly?

DR. DAVID HIMMELSTEIN: It's what we used to call national health insurance. So government collects the money for health care from taxes, you don't pay premiums, instead you pay taxes, and pays all the bills. Hospitals remain privately owned and operated. Doctors remain mostly in private practice. But their bills go to the government insurance program, just as they do today with Medicare, but we'd be able to streamline the payment system if we had only one payer instead of Medicare being one among many.

So a hospital would get paid like a fire department does today. You have one check a month that pays for the entire operation. And that means you can eliminate the huge billing apparatus of the hospitals and the doctors offices where we're employing many people to do our billing. And fighting with insurance companies. You save $400 billion a year that way.

DR. SIDNEY WOLFE: Here's an example of what David's talking about. Over the last 30 plus years there have been maybe two and a half, three times more doctors and nurses. Pretty much in proportion with the growth in population. There are 30 times, 3-0 times more health administrators. These people are not doctors. They're not nurses. They're not pharmacists. They're not providing care. Many of them are being paid to deny care. So, they are fighting with the doctors, with the hospitals to see how few bills can be paid. That's how the insurance industry thrives by denying care, paying as little out as it can, getting the healthiest patients, and yet getting reimbursed as though these patients were sicker than they really are.

So, it's a system that is guaranteed to waste a lot of money. And what we've said is that the amount of money that's just being wasted in one year is enough to pay for more than enough of the premiums for those that are uninsured and the people that are underinsured. So, it's not a matter of bringing more money. I mean, the industry is now saying, "We could save $2 trillion over the next ten years. Let us. Trust us. We will lower our costs and everything." The amount that can be saved over the next ten years by just eliminating the health insurance industry is $4 trillion, in one fell swoop.
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By the way, when you hear Republicans say health care is 1/6th of the economy they are adding Hospitals and doctors in with the health insurance industry. The health insurance industry adds 20% administrative costs plus profit to the actual cost FOR HEALTH CARE. So what is 20% of 16.7% (1/6th) ... it's about 3%. That's what proportion the health insurance industry is.

But the for-profit insurers don't just add 20% to the cost of health care they add more than that because doctors and hospitals spend a good deal of time filling out forms (every insurer has different forms) and talking with insurers trying to get payment for covered procedures.


More from Dr. Wolfe and Dr. Himmelstein on the Public Citizen web-site:

http://www.citizen.org/publications/release.cfm?ID=7271

The Cost to the Nation, the States and the District of Columbia, with State-Specific Estimates of Potential Savings

by David U. Himmelstein, M.D., Steffie Woolhandler, M.D., M.P.H. and Sidney M. Wolfe, M.D.


The U.S. wastes more on health care bureaucracy than it would cost to provide health care to all of the uninsured. Administrative expenses will consume at least $399.4 billion out of total health expenditures of $1,660.5 billion in 2003. Streamlining administrative overhead to Canadian levels would save approximately $286.0 billion in 2003, $6,940 for each of the 41.2 million Americans who were uninsured as of 2001. This is substantially more than would be needed to provide full insurance coverage.

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Frankly, I think the 25% ($399 Billion of $1,600 billion may be conservative. Check out the orginal study by Dr. Himmelstein:

here is Dr. Himmelstein's study pubished in New England Journal of Medicine:

http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/349/8/768?ijkey=942f4b7924a1afe54df53ea6bb01b012192849fd#T1

Hospital Administration

The average U.S. hospital devoted 24.3 percent of spending to administration.

~~
~~

Administrative Costs of Practitioners

In the United States, administrative tasks consumed 13.5 percent of physicians' time, valued at $15.5 billion. Physicians spent 8.3 percent of their gross income on clinical employees; the administrative portion (13.5 percent) of compensation of these employees was $3.0 billion. Physicians' costs for clerical staff averaged 12.3 percent of physicians' gross income, or $33.1 billion. The one third of physicians' office rent and expenses attributable to administration represented 4.6 percent of physicians' gross income, or $12.4 billion. Finally, the half of "other professional expenses" (a category that includes accounting and legal fees) attributable to administration accounted for 3.2 percent of physicians' income, or $8.6 billion. In total, physicians' administrative work and costs amounted to $72.6 billion — $261 per capita, or 26.9 percent of physicians' gross income.
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That was 24% of hospital costs and 27% of professional services costs from doctors. Somehow I think the average percentage of costs BEFORE you add on the 20% admin an profit for the insurance companies is going to be pretty close to 25%. Now, that looks to me like your talking about close to 50% for TOTAL administrative costs.

This would be consistent with the statistic that we spend about twice as much (per capita) as the average of all the other industrialized nations on health care. If you eliminated the unnecessary administrative costs you would cut our health care per capita cost about in half putting us in line with the rest of the industrialized world.

[Aragorn]

1. nothing new here

but ya gotta keep saying it!

[fascisthunter]

2. unfortunately, too many in Congress don't want an Efficient Healthcare System

here's a case where the country as a whole will save money, that includes us tax payers. This is in effect very conservative... how ironic.

[Ruby the Liberal]

3. Moyers has been a true national treasure on this.

[Uncle Joe]

4. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, JohnWxy.:thumbsup:

[Demeter]

5. Reality's Liberal Bias Showing Again

[JohnWxy]

7. "Reality's Liberal bias".... very good.

[Chisox08]

6. But, but,

But what about the profits of the insurance companies. Please think about the insanely high profits. Who will protect them?

[JohnWxy]

8. raise your voice for the GOP.....

I've been working all my life.
I'm not gettin anywhere.
Could it be the GOP,
they will screw me cheerfully.

Corporate profits are their thing.
Fucking people while they sing,
how they care for common men.
While your work just profits them.