Putting everybody in Medicare -- which I favor -- seems like a daunting exercise too. No doubt all the current arrangements would need to be revisited. Plus the administration would have to expand, a lot. Eventually it would save money.
Rolling the cost of the whole U.S. health care system into one or two programs would make the growth explicit and generate pressure to economize. This would be a good problem, as opposed to bad one, but it wouldn't be an easy problem.
My ten second rap on controlling health care costs is that you have to attack providers, rather than reduce care. Cheaper administration, prevention, medical records, etc. don't solve the problem.
>>
> But what about that *old* "gigantic reporting/reimbursement system" known as
> Medicare? When I switched from private insurance to Medicare I experienced
> no disruption at all. Of course, if everyone were to be brought under it
> Medicare would need to improve incrementally it's coverages and
> reimbursement rates. Which in any case it should do today, yesterday no
> longer being possible. If everyone were brought under an improved Medicare
> the tax system (now an even greater disgrace to the human race than when JC
> made his immortal comment) would indeed have to be revised drastically in
> order to recapture the private-insurance money now wasted on bureaucracy and
> profits and "executive" loot.
>
> Obama, with his no-tax-increases/balanced-budget obsession is clearly an
> enemy of such change.
> He is also, as his Repugnicon heckler said, a liar. The question though is
> which statement is a lie: that his plan will not cover any illegal
> immigrants (the one Mr. Wilson called him on) or that under his plan no
> person will be left to suffer and die because of lack of health insurance?
>>
>> On Thu, Sep 10, 2009 at 6:33 PM, Chuck Grimes <cgrimes at rawbw.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> On Thu, 2009-09-10 at 12:48 -0700, ken hanly wrote:
>>>>
>>>> How did he rat out the CBC? I thought that Obama might take a moment to
>>>> correct the constant misrepresentation of the Canadian system on US TV ads.
>>>>
>>>> Is it even true that a single payer system would disrupt the health care
>>>> people already have, except perhaps to make it cheaper and more efficient?
>>>> It would certainly disrupt the vested interests that make the US system
>>>> so expensive and inefficient.
>>>
>>> Is it true single payer would distrupt...? No. You`re right. That went
>>> straight passed me. I missed that. What a slime.
>>>
>
> Shane Mage
>
>> This cosmos did none of gods or men make, but it
>> always was and is and shall be: an everlasting fire,
>> kindling in measures and going out in measures."
>>
>> Herakleitos of Ephesos
>
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>