Without looking it up, I seem to remember that the administrative costs of SS are about 3%. No private insurance company can match that - it is indeed a well-run entity. Whether or not SS should be doing all it's doing is another issue, but it is efficient.
There's a hell of a lot of money in SS which is why the industry wants to privatize it. That would be a real scam. Millions of tiny retirement accounts, expensive to manage, getting fleeced by Wall St.
Replacement wrote (in part) " I mentioned these plans to refute Gnomon's suggestion that MediCare is somehow undercutting the private plans. In fact, MediCare is aiding and abetting the private plans."
I had thought that the Advantage Medicare plans were given to the private providers to manage because of intense lobbying by the industry. The Advantage plans are much more expensive, administratively, thann Medicare. A larger percentage of Medicare dollars goes to health care if paid directly by Medicare than if paid via the private contractors.
The same thing with student loans - there is no reason why banks should administer student loans and take a fee if the gov't can do it for less. Obama cut the banks out of the chain and now the money that goes into student loans has a lower administrative cost.
