--- Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> If you said "like Amtrak," that would doom it, but
> it would make
> little sense to have mutliple entities running a
> nationalized system,
> since you'd lose a lot of the administrative
> efficiencies. Some sort
> of semiautonomous agency like the Social Security
> Administration
> would be a good model - it's extremely efficient,
> highly popular, and
> scandal-free.
I mentioned Amtrak only to give an example of what a 501c1 is - a nonprofit entity established by an act of Congress, but I am well aware of the problems with this analogy. The reason why Amtrak looks so "inefficient" (even though it is not, given its constraints) has something to do with the geography of the service (mainly Northeastern states), the way the thing is funded (as a discretionary budget item as opposed to a statutory transfer i.e. like social security), and the competition from other modes of transport. But these conditions are specific to the railroad business.
OTOH, if you set a health care 501c1 modeled, as you suggest, after the Social Security Administration whose funding is guaranteed by law rather than decided through a political process (like SS tax, except this would be called "premiums"), and make it a mandatory first tier health insurance program (again, like SS), however, people could voluntarily purchase supplementary health insurance from other insurers to cover rare conditions - this is likely to work and gain public support because it would be labeled a "private nonprofit organization." It could even have an elected comissioner overseeing its operation to make it look even more like public-controlled as opposed to government-controlled.
Wojtek
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