Some States Push for Health Care Pooling

[Selatius]

By ANDREW WELSH-HUGGINS, Associated Press Writer Tue May 3, 7:29 AM ET

COLUMBUS, Ohio - The cost of health care has more than doubled in Milton Williams' two decades as treasurer of a small school district in northeast Ohio.

With Lakeview schools now paying almost $2 million a year in premiums, Williams says he's open to a legislative proposal to have the state's school districts pool together to buy health insurance.

He isn't alone: Advocates in at least a half dozen states where insurance pooling plans are being considered say it makes little sense for school systems to negotiate health plans individually.

"We'd definitely like to spend more money on textbooks and instructional supplies," Williams said.

Opponents of insurance pooling — including many teachers' unions and districts with generous benefits — say a state-run bureaucracy can diminish benefits and strip them of collective bargaining rights.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=519&ncid=519&e=14&u=/ap/20050503/ap_on_re_us/health_care_pooling

Is this a good idea or not? Could individual citizens pool together and negotiate as a bloc prices with pharmaceutical companies?

[ibid]

1. It does not help a lot - lower sales cost gets passed on as premium

reductions - but Only national single payer changes enough to save the 20% to 40% that will get us to the worlds industrial nation average cost of national health care.

Indeed if our version has the buy the latest medical equipment so as to have dozens of over-equipped hospitals rules left in we will only get down to a 20% reduction rather than a full reduction in medical costs.

The system of putting kids into debt for 200,000 as they get there MD, justified by all the money they will make when they get out, has to end and be replaced by a normal cost of education debt load of perhaps 10% of the current level. By bringing MD's from India in who do not have the debt load, the MD student in the US is getting screwed as MD wages drop. And thus Medical Schools will soon start to close.