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