OK, color me ignorant, but can anyone explain to me exactly what

[Seabiscuit]

"single-payer health care" is?

It's not exactly something one can look up in a dictionary.

[htuttle]

1. ...but you can look it up on Google

Here's a good one:
http://www.pnhp.org/

Single-Payer health insurance is basically having a nationalized health insurance company, typically either partly or fully subsidized by the government.

[ClassWarrior]

3. Yes, the medical system stays as-is. It's the insurance system...

...that's nationalized. So, yes, one can keep one's own doctor.

NGU.

[Lex]

4. Nice site you linked.

Thanks!

[applegrove]

8. With single payer.. the risk of illness is pooled across the country.

Much less risky. They say the average cost of health care in Canada is less than $3000.00. In the USA with your present system it is about $5000.00 per year. There are efficiencies that come when your doctor or hospital doesn't need a waterfall in the lobby. Nobody is making sales. And because it doesn't cost for each visit or there is no deductable... people go and seek help before they get sick. Stops illness. Preventive medicine and all. Half the bankrupcies in the USA are related to catastrophic illness. That doesn't happen in Canada very often. It is both more equitable (fair) but also more efficient (less admin costs). It is simply a better system. Why all the other Western nations have some form of it. In Canada and France about 70% of medicine falls under universal health care. The rest is private.

[Missy M]

2. One insurance, one form to fill out by doctors and hospitals....

every American citizen covered for health care.

[Yavin4]

5. Take Medicare and Eliminate the Over 65 Provision

Voila! Single-payer health insurance. The reason why health care costs outpace inflation every year is because of the overhead that health providers have to pay to track every insurance and HMO plan in America.

Think of a restaurant. At one table, they have complete insurance, so you know that they can pay the bill right away. At another table, they have a HMO which will pay 65% of the bill, so you have to charge the table the remaining 35%. At yet another table, they have a HMO that will pay 50% of the bill, and the table has to pay the remaining 50%. Finally at another table, they cannot pay at all, but you still have to serve them. So, you have to charge all of the paying tables an additional cost to recover. Etc. This is what doctors do every day.

With single-payer, everyone can pay, so there's no overhead to track down payment.

[flamin lib]

6. Overhead is only part of the problem . . .

"The reason why health care costs out pace inflation every year is because of the overhead that health providers have to pay"

That's part of it, but the larger part is that insurance premiums go up to cover the stock market losses of the insurance companies. They have a responsibility to their stockholders to make a profit and they do so by investing premiums in the market. When the market goes soft so do stock dividend and to counter that they raise premiums.

Insurance costs have nothing to do with health care costs--they have everything to do with stock market performance.

[Yavin4]

7. I Was Explaining It From the Health Care Provider Point of View

Not the HMO point of view. My point was that actual health care costs, as charged by the health care provider, go up every year largely because of the different payment schemes from various HMOs. In addition, every year HCPs have to re-negotiate payment terms with these HMOs.