doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Presidential candidate supports INDIVIDUAL RKBA

Really - is that a "Fact"? So the principle of 'economy of scale' has been cancelled? Not according to CAHI, a private health insurance industry organization:

"Medicare covers around 42 million individuals with one program which should provide it significant economies of scale. The private under age 65 market covers around 165 million individuals through hundreds of companies, suggesting much less ability to create economies of scale.

"The Federal government usually reports its Medicare administrative costs at about 2% of total payments under the program while private costs vary dramatically from market to market, but frequently are cited to be in the 15-20% range on average." http://www.cahi.org/cahi_contents/resources/pdf/CAHIMedicareTechnicalPaper.pdf


Try comparing the adminstrative cost of Medicare to private health insurance, Peter. CAHI, the private insurance industry advocate, has done that, and even they had to come to this conclusion:

"Medicare’s actual administrative costs are 5.2 percent, when the hidden costs are included...average private sector administrative costs, about 8.9 percent – and 16.7 percent when commission, premium tax, and profit are
included. http://www.cahi.org/cahi_contents/resources/pdf/CAHI_Medicare_Admin_Final_Publication.pdf

Interesting that they had to factor out commissions, taxes and profit (What? No profit?) to get their costs down to about 60 percent more than the gov't health plan. Including all costs for both plans, administering private health insurance costs over 200 percent more than administering Medicare, according to a private health insurance industry source!

I would be suprised if a state doesn't take it on, as suggested by members here. That's how it started in Canada in Saskatchewan. AMA saw it as clear poison, the CMA as pure Moscow and Pravda, and they poured everything into the province to stop it. The Saskatchewan premier who started it, a Baptist clergyman born in Scotland, was last year voted Canadian of the 20th Century.

A factor militating against US universal coverage may be a cultural difference between here and there. Our West was settled by hardy and independent old European immigrants, as yours, who wouldn't go to a doctor unless the Reaper was at the farm gate. But they came here for something better and, with inspirational leadership, recognized cooperative responsibility could work for health as well as other endeavours.

Canada's pioneer ethic evolved into a legislated system of, in effect, each one being responsible to every one for the important things that bind a society together---health, social welfare, education etc. Under a national equalization program which is a work in progress the richer provinces assist financially the weaker provinces so they may provide services to a national standard.

I won't put too fine a point on it here, but I think of it not so much as socialist, as so often implied here, but what a young country of fabulous wealth chose democratically as how they wanted their society to work, following Jesus's gospel of service and love. Every government, conservative and liberal, has strived to improve it---as the US evidences in the current debates.

Sorry Jack, but you're trying to sell snakeoil. You refuse to list the ingredients in the bottle. In this case, you have yet to get specific about WHICH EXACT PLAN you support. Would it be Canada's, Great Britain's, France's, Sweden's? How about the plan in the old Soviet Union? They had universal health care for 70-odd years; maybe still do. And it didn't seem to work all that well for them. You're saying that there are "plans" out there (not further specified) that are better than our current American system. Now I don't know too many people that don't believe our system has problems, but you're not doing much to help us solve them. And nothing you've said to this point is of any real value at all, unless you're willing to get behind A SPECIFIC PLAN. Then you need to sell that SPECIFIC plan to a politician--preferably one running for president, or at least someone who's a major player in Congress. So . . . tell us which of the plans you've reviewed in detail you like best. Tell us why it's the best of the bunch. Then tell us why you think it will work well for the United States. Finally, tell us how much it's going to cost.

As usual, Larry sets up a straw man ("A SPECIFIC PLAN") and then beats it to death - without providing any information on his part. According to Larry, I'm obligated to provide all sorts of details about something I never proposed ("A SPECIFIC PLAN"), while he provides nothing but vague generalities.

I agree with Larry that "nothing" I've posted here - the specific data on national health care costs and performance, the links to information sources - "is of any real value at all" to anyone whose mind is firmly closed and doesn't want to be confused by facts. I only hope that forum members with open minds will benefit from greater knowledge.

Sorry, Larry. I've seen your straw man arguments before. If you can contribute any legitimate facts to contradict the information I have provided and sourced, I'd be glad to discuss it. If you can contribute any worthwhile information to help us get a better understanding of the issues surrounding national health care, I'd be pleased to consider it.

Otherwise, I'll just ignore the usual spluttering from the peanut gallery.

Jack, once again you seem to want to disagree about what we bot agree on. Health insurance companies significantly increase the cost of medical care. You still have not addressed my point that the federal government was not established to be our nannies. My point about social security still stands also.
Do you really know and understand what the term 'economies of scale' means. In the private sector economies of scale reduce cost to a manufacturer or service provider increasing their ability to compete in the marketplace and hopefully increasing profits. In terms of the government ecomomies of scale, while reducing the cost of operation also decrease the tax base upon which government survives, thereby negating part of the savings if not increasing the total cost of service.
Fortunately for me I spent the body of the day bird hunting and had very little time for fact checking. The one statistic that I did find was that in the USA the infant mortality rate reported by the CDC was .68%. When I checked the WHO site their statistics were not broken down into percents but by very vague and broad parameters, not specific at all. I was hapy to see however that their nice color coded map of infant mortality had the USA the same green shade as almost all of Europe. Northern Europe and Canada were a nicer color but going by their reporting methods this could be caused by as litle as one infant death in 100,000. Peter

Peter: Thanks for raising a substantive question. Here's a substantive answer.

For 2007 infant mortality per 1,000 births:
Austria 4.5
Canada 4.6
Denmark 4.5
France 4.2
Germany 4.1
Spain 4.3
United Kingdom 5.0
United States 6.4
Source: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0004393.html
A more comprehensive source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_infant_mortality_rate

As to why the US government was established, check the preamble to the Constitution. Might not basic health care come under the requirement to "promote the general Welfare"?

Just because no one has put forth a good plan does not mean it is not needed. The problem is that the powers that be are too entrenched and are paying off everyone who will take their money.

The "plan" simply needs to provide good basic health care to all. Pharmaceutical companies will have to sell competitively to the biggest buyer in the world. Supplemental policies should be allowed. Doctors do not have to agree to take patients. But, as a practical matter, they will when everyone has nationalized coverage or they won't have many patients.

There will be more jobs in health care for providers. Doctors and other professionals should be better compensated than they are now by the insurance conglomerate.

The Country will have much better health care and it will cost less than it does now.

See, simple.

Jake

yOu guys have made up my mind for me.

I'm vOting for Osama Bama...

Jack's forgetting the culture of having children for the rent money. Not the best of health care wanted or needed!

Lowell, at least paying for the rent provides some pleasure for the baby-makers, unlike corporations paying lobbyists to deliver prime pork, paid from your pocket. The baby bonus is small change compared to the pork, if your country is similar in this respect to ours.