From The Madison Capital Times, 8/27/03:
http://www.madison.com/captimes/opinion/column/zweifel/55572.php
Time is now for universal health care
By Dave Zweifel
There are those who scoff at the assertion that if we took the
administrative costs out of our jury-rigged medical system and coupled
it with the tens of billions we currently spend on insurance premiums
and other fees, we'd have enough money to provide much-needed health
insurance for every American citizen.
Now there's a study that backs that up.
An article in a recent New England Journal of Medicine states that the
private bureaucracy that collectively handles our health care cost
Americans $294.3 billion in 1999 - the last year for which complete
figures are available - or roughly $1,059 per person.
That, the report adds, is three times the $307 per person in paperwork
costs that Canada spends on its national health insurance system.
In other words, if we could cut our private administrative costs to
the Canadian level, we'd have saved $209 billion that year.
The authors of the report found that those administrative costs
accounted for 31 percent of the total health spending in '99.
That's up from slightly less than 20 percent in 1969, the report said.
The NEJM article attributed the high costs to three factors.
First, private insurers have high overhead that's only getting higher.
Second, America's fragmented payment system drives up administrative
costs for doctors and hospitals who must deal with hundreds of
different insurance plans, referrals and complicated rules. And third,
the increasing business orientation of hospitals and insurers has
expanded their bureaucracy.
Applying those findings to Wisconsin, a separate report estimates that
administrative costs here this year will hit $7.7 billion.
The report concludes that $5.5 billion of this could be saved under a
national health insurance program.
That, a group of local physicians says, equals $13,513 for each of
Wisconsin's 409,000 uninsured residents - enough to provide universal
coverage with money left over to offer seniors full prescription drug
coverage and to upgrade coverage for others who are under-insured.
"Hundreds of billions are squandered each year on health care
bureaucracy in our nation," said Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, the lead
author of the study and an associate professor of medicine at Harvard.
"Americans spend almost twice as much per capita on health care as
Canadians, who have universal coverage and live two years longer."
Unfortunately, this country's insurance companies, pharmaceutical
giants and other corporate medical interests and charlatan politicians
have fostered the myth that a government-run health system would be
wasteful and inefficient.
The truth, however, is exactly the opposite and it's time for
Americans to wake up to that fact.
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Shhhh. "Univeral health care" is a naughty phrase to the greedy.
Harry
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