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Stinky The Clown (1000+ posts) Fri Jul-03-09 09:55 AMOriginal message The "impossibly, obscenely, painfully high" cost of universal single payer ........ ....... needs to thought of more rationally.1 - Right now, as citizens, we pay income and FICA tax to the government. The government takes that money and pays it back in the form of services. Among those services are Medicare and (most of) Medicaid. We can argue the efficiency and value of that stuff, but the statement is fundamentally true.2 - Then there is the money paid to insurance companies, drug companies, hospitals, doctors, MRI and other high tech medical gadget makers, wheelchair and scooter companies, diabetic supply houses, etc. etc. etc. That money is real and is paid by us directly or indirectly. If the government were to take over just the money paid to the insurance companies, and provide the "service" provided now by the insurers, and added that money to the federal budget and charged that money, on a fair, progressive basis, to the citizens - all citizens - we would have single payer and universal coverage.The only entities to suffer in all this are the insurers. They will be left to sell only luxury insurance policies that pay for all the elective, vanity stuff the basic policy ought not get into anyhow. Or the ability for one of their insured to go to the head of the lines that will likely not be any longer than they are now.By the way, the insurer's employees will likely be needed to run the federal system - at least for a while - and at least till their numbers can be diminished through attrition as the system grows more efficient.Other entities to be impacted might be Big Pharma, as their one big customer - we the people - tell them we will no longer pay the criminally high prices they now charge us. Same for Big MedTech. And BigHealth.This all seems so simple. Yes, the details are complex. But the basic concept is very simple. We can have single payer, right now, if we have the political will to do this VERY BIG BOLD MOVE.VERY BIG, BOLD MOVES are what GREAT presidencies are based upon.Barak Obama is the singularly most gifted political orator since ..... maybe ..... the 1800s. Certainly of the last century and this one. He really COULD sell this.
This all seems so simple simplistic
Stinky The ClownThe only entities to suffer in all this are the insurers.
They will be left to sell only luxury insurance policies that pay for all the elective, vanity stuff the basic policy ought not get into anyhow
till their numbers can be diminished through attrition as the system grows more efficient.
"till their numbers can be diminished through attrition as the system grows more efficient."This really takes the cake. Only a brain-dead DUmmy could suggest that a government-run program will grow nore efficient. She must never allow him out of the cellar.
