Reply #3: 80 percent?

[mojowork_n]

It makes my head hurt to try and guess if Sensenbrenner was being honest, or just pulling a plausible-sounding number out of his big (and mercifully, pin-stripe covered) butt.

Art Kumbalek was more accurate, in the Shepherd, a couple of weeks ago:

...But God bless the private health care industry. Without it, how else would fat-ass white women in Waukesha County have employment as paper-shufflers and designated coverate-deniers so as to provide their household with a second income that they can afford the tuition needed to send their kids to good private Christian schools...

Any real solutions for the current mess would require dismantling some of the for-profit/coverage-denying incentives our current 'health care' providers enjoy. So their heels are dug in.

...Never mind that the U.S. has the highest cost pharmaceuticals on the planet, or that our health care outcomes rank below Slovenia's, at more than twice the cost, per capita.

A Medicare-for-all single-payer system would take a much bigger bite out of everybody's payroll check, BUT:

"...Medicaid, the program that pays for medical care for the poor, and is funded by federal and state taxes, would be eliminated, saving $400 billion a year.

Veterans’ care, currently running at $100 billion a year, would be eliminated.

Perhaps two-thirds of the $300 billion a year spent by federal, state and local governments to reimburse hospitals for so-called “charity care” for treatment of people who have no insurance but don’t qualify for Medicaid, would be eliminated.

Individuals and employers would no longer have to pay for private insurance.

Several hundred billion dollars currently spent on paperwork by private insurers would be eliminated.

Car insurance would be cheaper as there would no longer have to be coverage for medical bills.

Federal, state and local governments would no longer have to pay to insure public employees..."

From a Dave Lindorff article, at:

http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff09222009.html

Anyway, Thanks for the report.