Nick Anderson by Nick Anderson

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Comments (8) Jump to Comments Form

  1. pbarnrob

    pbarnrob said, 6 months ago

    What it will replace won’t fit in the auditorium…

  2. cdward

    cdward said, 6 months ago

    I tend to agree with pbarnrob. Our current private system eats up much more of our money than a universal health care system would.

  3. curiosity1

    curiosity1 said, 6 months ago

    I agree as well.

  4. yayliberalism

    yayliberalism said, 6 months ago

    I also agree

  5. LLeRay

    LLeRayGenius_badge said, 6 months ago

    The current kludge has problems evident even to the profiteers, so some sort of reform will happen.

  6. lcbiii

    lcbiii said, 6 months ago

    If you consider medicare as a surrogate for universal care and consider that it costs

    the healthcare system was 2.2 trillion in 2007 or 16% of GDP

    medicare was $431 billion and medicaid was $329 billion so that would be 760 billion leaving 1.4 trillion or so for third party or self payers.

    There are 44 million medicare beneficiaries as of 2008, and 58 million on medicaid leaving 202 million people on neither.

    Roughly speaking, then, the third of the US population that is on medicare and medicaid are consuming roughly 1/3 of the total health care expenditure.

    Assuming that a government run nationalized single payer system would run like CMS (medicare and medicaid) and you bring in the other 2/3rds not already on those programs, it makes me wonder if the costs would still be about the same.

    Considering the fact that CMS is saying that as things stand now, by 2018 50% of the 20% of GDP being spent for healthcare will be spent by the government (up from 1/3 now), one can see that merely shifting spending toward the government alone won’t control healthcare costs which is the issue in question.

    The real reform in medicine has to be how to reduce costs and there are lots of places to do that.

  7. lcbiii

    lcbiii said, 6 months ago

    Now that is true - these are rough numbers and most of medicare spending is on older and sicker populations. However, there may be more spending from populations that were not previously covered that would now be covered. Additonally, that 1.4 trillion isn’t going to just disappear if it were rolled into medicare.

  8. danielsangeo

    danielsangeo said, 6 months ago

    “You are beginning to understand the universal health care solution, rationing.”

    Define “rationing” in this context and contrast it with what we have now. Cite examples of “health care rationing”.

    Thanks!