* Insurance: Social Security is a trust fund to provide retirement for each American citizen. Social Security distribution costs are under one percent; 99 percent is returned to the insured. Private insurance, which collects $400 billion each year of Americans' money and holds it in trust returns, on average, less than 50 percent of these funds; over 50 percent are used for the operating costs and profits of the private insurance industry. Social Security, with its automatic deductions, requires a labor force of only 63,500 while private insurance has an army of 2.2 million workers; each are handling the same size trust fund. Going to an efficient single-payer insurance system would eliminate almost 2 million insurance workers and reduce insurance costs by half.
Source: http://www.context.org/ICLIB/IC37/Smith.htm