How is a single payer system going to reduce bureaucracies when in fact it's going to be the gov who runs it. :? Sorry i don't trust our gov to run our healthcare. Our gov destroys practically everything it touches. Social security is a prime example. They stole all the money.
You seem to be under the misapprehension that it's only bureaucracy if it's the government doing it. Bureaucracy is rampant also inn large businesses. What creates bureacracy is laws and rules that have exceptions and means-testing. Because when you do, someone must be paid to do the judgement or the testing. Americans are terrified to death of comprehensive public solutions, but at the same time think it's too bad that granny should die for lack of treatment. Enter subsidiary programs and means testing. Furthermore, when hospitals are privately owned and seperate entities, combined with a torrent of different providers, well you can do the math. You could have all hospitals organized together, with one place to send the bill every time, or you could have houndreds of seperate hospitals needing payments from houndreds of different providers. Which generates the most paper work do you think?
You can feel what yo want about single payer vs private, but it is pretty well documented that your system creates a lot more overhead because so many different parties must talk together and agree. (Or avoid responsibility) So administratively, there's no question at all that single payer will be cheaper, because that would mean less, yes less, bureaucracy than the mess you have now.
But let me just drive home 1 point thoroughly: Bureaucracy is not something of government, but something that accumulates in big, complex organizations no matter which sector or business. Health care is already big and complex, to which you add complexity with having many different providers that's gonna bill eachother.
So be free to resist a universal system, but don't tell me it would be more expensive because of bureaucracy. Universal would cover more and thus cost more on the national budget, but it would mean better health for more people and a more efficient use of health resources, ie you'd get more health from every buck spent than under the current. To compare costs, you have to include what americans today pay in premiums and add to what the government spends on health care.
Peace
Dan
From Physicians for a National Health Program:
"Won’t this just be another bureaucracy?
The United States has the most bureaucratic health care system in the world. Over 31% of every health care dollar goes to paperwork, overhead, CEO salaries, profits, etc. Because the U.S. does not have a unified system that serves everyone, and instead has thousands of different insurance plans, each with its own marketing, paperwork, enrollment, premiums, and rules and regulations, our insurance system is both extremely complex and fragmented.
The Medicare program operates with just 3% overhead, compared to 15% to 25% overhead at a typical HMO. Provincial single-payer plans in Canada have an overhead of about 1%.
It is not necessary to have a huge bureaucracy to decide who gets care and who doesn’t when everyone is covered and has the same comprehensive benefits. With a universal health care system we would be able to cut our bureaucratic burden in half and save over $300 billion annually."
if only universal health care meant universal health care. the same fuckers that were deciding policy when the US was pissed off about it are the same fuckers deciding policy now. its empire, the landowners and managers are deciding policy, as its always been,. they aren't about to cede that power.
for once i would have to agree with prfctlefts ...
the bureaucracy that exists within major gov't programs is ridiculous beyond belief ... it's not necessarily the gov'ts fault but really the product of a nation that has lost it's way ...
Wrong, the bureaucratic mechanism is inherent to any system that doesn't have another driving motive. In the private sector, that motive for better or worse is profit and by extension efficiency. What movitvates the public sector?
One might argue it's the "common good". Whether such a thing exists is an entirely different (a "whole 'nother", if you come from where I come from, ha) philosophical argument, but let's accept it for now. The question then becomes, how do you determine what the common good is? Then, okay, how do we go about actuating that? The answer, absent a blind market force (like, for example, profit), is one of two things: one person decides that it's so (authoritarian) or a group decides that it's so (republican/democratic/bureaucratic).
for once i would have to agree with prfctlefts ...
the bureaucracy that exists within major gov't programs is ridiculous beyond belief ... it's not necessarily the gov'ts fault but really the product of a nation that has lost it's way ...
Wrong, the bureaucratic mechanism is inherent to any system that doesn't have another driving motive. In the private sector, that motive for better or worse is profit and by extension efficiency. What movitvates the public sector?
One might argue it's the "common good". Whether such a thing exists is an entirely different (a "whole 'nother", if you come from where I come from, ha) philosophical argument, but let's accept it for now. The question then becomes, how do you determine what the common good is? Then, okay, how do we go about actuating that? The answer, absent a blind market force (like, for example, profit), is one of two things: one person decides that it's so (authoritarian) or a group decides that it's so (republican/democratic/bureaucratic).
Comments
One might argue it's the "common good". Whether such a thing exists is an entirely different (a "whole 'nother", if you come from where I come from, ha) philosophical argument, but let's accept it for now. The question then becomes, how do you determine what the common good is? Then, okay, how do we go about actuating that? The answer, absent a blind market force (like, for example, profit), is one of two things: one person decides that it's so (authoritarian) or a group decides that it's so (republican/democratic/bureaucratic).
what...? :?