Must Read: Yes, We Can All Be Insured by Newsweek's Jane Bryant Quinn

[flpoljunkie]

We Can Afford Universal Health Care
By Jane Bryant Quinn
Newsweek

July 30, 2007 issue - Prepare to be terrorized, shocked, scared out of your wits. No, not by jihadists or Dementors (you do read "Harry Potter," right?), but by the evil threat of ... universal health insurance! The more the presidential candidates talk it up, the wilder the warnings against it. Cover everyone? Wreck America? Do you know what care would cost?

But the public knows the American health-care system is breaking up, no matter how much its backers cheer. For starters, there's the 46 million uninsured (projected to rise to 56 million in five years). There's the shock of the underinsured when they learn that their policies exclude a costly procedure they need—forcing them to run up an unpayable bill, beg for charity care or go without. And think of the millions who plan their lives around health insurance—where to work, whether to start a business, when to retire, even whom to marry (there are "benefits" marriages, just as there are "green card" marriages). It shocks the conscience that those who profit from this mess tell us to suck it up.

I do agree that we can't afford to cover everyone under the crazy health-care system we have now. We can't even afford all the people we're covering already, which is why we keep booting them out. But we have an excellent template for universal care right under our noses: good old American Medicare. When you think of reform, think "Medicare for all."

Medicare is what's known as a single-payer system. In the U.S. version, the government pays for health care delivered in the private sector. There's one set of comprehensive benefits, with premiums, co-pays and streamlined paperwork. You can buy private coverage for the extra costs.

Health insurers hate this model, which would end their gravy train. So they're trying to tar single-payer as a kind of medical Voldemort, ready to destroy. Here are some of their canards, and my replies:

Universal coverage costs too much. No—what costs too much is the system we have now. In 2005, the United States spent 15.3 percent of gross domestic product on health care for only some of us. France spent 10.7 percent and covered everyone. The French comparison is good because its system works very much like Medicare-for-all. The other European countries, all with universal coverage, spent less than France.

Why are U.S. costs off the charts? Partly because we don't bargain with providers for a universal price. Partly because of the money that health insurers spend on marketing and screening people in or out. Medicare's overhead is just 1.5 percent, compared with 13 to 16 percent in the private sector. John Sheils of the Lewin Group, a health-care consultant, says that the health insurers' overhead came to $120 billion last year, of which $40 billion was profit. By comparison, it would cost $54 billion to cover all the uninsured.

more...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19886686/site/newsweek/

[Kagemusha]

1. How can $40 billion of $120 b in overhead be profit? Overhead is a cost.

I think I understand what that paragraph tried to say but, it didn't say it effectively whatsoever.

Frankly the previous paragraph greatly understates the difference. The US' GDP is much larger than France's.

[flpoljunkie]

2. Thanks, I missed this. I think perhaps they might have meant to type "total revenue."

[Kagemusha]

3. Probably, yeah.

It's obviously not a conscious error.

[flpoljunkie]

4. But it does seem to be an error, and Newsweek ought to correct it.

[robinlynne]

9. could be ceo salaries, for example. overhead and profit.

[dtotire]

5. Kick

Everyone who reads this ought to alert their Congressman about this article.

[CTyankee]

6. This is significant. Quinn seems to me to be very MSM. After all, she writes for Newsweek!

So when she likes "Medicare for all" you know some folks are turning around, and judging by this piece from basically a business column, there's support in some formerly conservative groups out there for a solution to the health care quandary.

"Medicare for all" is a great way to describe it. People in the U.S. know Medicare and look forward to having its coverage and wish they could have it sooner so they can take early retirement.

But the trick is this: are we prepared to adequately fund it? I would have to have the program defunded so the Repubs could turn around and say "See, socialized medicine doesn't work!" That happened under Thatcher in the U.K.

[robinlynne]

10. She just showed how inexpensive it is, in comparison to what we have now.

[CTyankee]

11. Yes, it is. But the republicans will sabotage that if they get a majority in Congress

again. It is socialism to them. And they will cynically defund it and then denounce it as unworkable. If it could happen in the UK it could certainly happen here and will happen here unless we are so vigilant that it can't, but even then, we have an uphill battle.

[AX10]

7. Medicare for all is a great idea.

[in_cog_ni_to]

8. That's exactly what Michael Moore has been saying. "Medicare for all." When someone spews

"I don't want socialized medicine!" He asks them, "Do you like the Medicare program our seniors have?" When they say "yes"...he laughs in their face and tells them "that's a form of Government controlled socialized medicine."

Former British MP Tony Benn says it best in SiCKO in reference to war-torn Britain's decision to create the National Health Service in 1948: "If you can find money to kill people, you can find money to help people."