[lbo-talk] Doug on nationalizing the health insurance companies

Michael Pollak mpollak at panix.com
Sat Sep 19 22:24:43 PDT 2009


I just got around to hearing this show which was first podcast last week. It's hard to believe it hasn't been posted to lbo-talk, but I haven't seen it and didn't find it in an archive search. So just in case other people also overlooked a point that deserves more circulation:

http://doughenwood.wordpress.com/2009/09/13/radio-commentary-september-10-2009/

September 10, 2009 Radio commentary Doug Henwood

<snip>

A friend pointed out to me the other day that the market

capitalization--the value of all the outstanding stock--of the publicly

traded health insurers is about $150 billion. Add a little premium to

sweeten the pot and you could nationalize the lot of them for about

$200 billion. The total administrative costs of the U.S. healthcare

system, which are greatly inflated by all the paperwork and

second-guessing of docs' decisions generated by the insurance industry,

are about $400 billion a year. Those administrative costs are about

three times what a Canadian-style single payer system would cost. So

that means we'd save about $250 billion a year by eliminating the waste

caused by our private insurance system.

In other words, the nationalization could pay for itself in well under

a year. But we can't do that. It'd be Canadian or something.

<end excerpt>

And let me just add as a PS that I'm so happy these commentaries are now available as text to share.

Michael



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