One Nation, Uninsured

[snowdays]

The only way to do this is to omit the middle man



One Nation, Uninsured

...........The great advantage of universal, government-provided health insurance is lower costs. Canada's government-run insurance system has much less bureaucracy and much lower administrative costs than our largely private system. Medicare has much lower administrative costs than private insurance. The reason is that single-payer systems don't devote large resources to screening out high-risk clients or charging them higher fees. The savings from a single-payer system would probably exceed $200 billion a year, far more than the cost of covering all of those now uninsured.

.............Some people, not all of them right-wingers, fear that a single-payer system would hurt innovation. But the main reason these proposals give private insurers a big role is the belief that the insurers must be appeased.

That belief is rooted in recent history. Bill Clinton's health care plan failed in large part because of a dishonest but devastating lobbying and advertising campaign financed by the health insurance industry - remember Harry and Louise? And the lesson many people took from that defeat is that any future health care proposal must buy off the insurance lobby.

But I think that's the wrong lesson. The Clinton plan actually preserved a big role for private insurers; the industry attacked it all the same. And the plan's complexity, which was largely a result of attempts to placate interest groups, made it hard to sell to the public. So I would argue that good economics is also good politics: reformers will do best with a straightforward single-payer plan, which offers maximum savings and, unlike the Clinton plan, can easily be explained.

We need to do this one right. If reform fails again, we'll be on the way to a radically unequal society, in which all but the most affluent Americans face the constant risk of financial ruin and even premature death because they can't pay their medical bills.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/13/opinion/13krugman.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1242044165-ZDw53QFs17RJKuMnW9WC9w

[patrice]

1. Blogger on the Thom Hartmann show: If they don't think we should have Healthcare, why should we

pay for theirs?

[snowdays]

2. that should be the QUOTE OF THE DAY

[patrice]

3. I will put it on a sign for our street-corner group.

[snowdays]

4. Nice to hear that you have a group

out there protesting about this issue. Best

[patrice]

5. The Healthcare street corner presence is growing out of the Peace people who were

already out there in the streets in our metro area.

We have had 2 regular groups for almost the whole last 6 years.