If insurance company profit and CEO bonuses are the reason for the high healthcare costs why does medicare and medicaid cost (roughly) the same amount per person covered as private insurance?

In reality-land the statistics tell us that the cost of insurance company profit and executive bonuses are (roughly) offset by the inefficiency of a public system and the core problems with the cost in the American healthcare system lie elsewhere.

Then reform the healthcare system (what I am for). Taking it away from them to give to the Federal Government in hopes that it becomes more efficient, is lunacy.

Here are a few things that can be done with ease:

• Never let a business buy medical insurance for an individual. Require the individual to buy their own plan. If the business wants cover a portion of the cost of the plan, raise their salary. This would make sure that the plan follows the individual, and it would make it cost a lot less for people under employed to buy insurance.
• Sell care like the auto industry. In the auto industry, they post there hourly costs, and there is a standard book that tells you how many hours something takes. If you want your alternator changes, and the posted hours cost is $120, and the book says it takes 1 hour to change an alternator, they charge you $120. If it takes then 15 minutes, or 3 hours, they charge you $120. The same can be done with medical care.
• Sell insurance like they sell car insurance. If you get sick or injured, submit a claim. If in that “book” it says it takes 7 hours to perform whatever procedure you need, and the average rate to pay is $300 an hour for it, your insurance cuts you a check for $2,100, and you take that to whomever you want for the procedure.

Some form if this technique would work. It already does in other industries.

Size does matter, but not the way you think.  The bigger you are the more efficient you become.  That is why Wal-Mart can easily out-compete smaller retailers, because of their size advantage.

Thats a huge assumption that the US government is better or worse than the UK government.  Whatever differences there are between the governments, there is no way they could account for two of the most similar countries in the world having three fold change in efficiency.

If you want to know what the government is more efficient at providing than the private market, you'll have to look characteristics of each individual good or service.  The most used examples for government provided goods are roads and security, being that the private market could never provide roads or a military as efficiently as the government.  To explain this, regarding security there is a free rider problem, if you paid Army Inc. to protect your country your neigbor doesn't have to pay anything to recieve the same service as you.  There is a disincentive to pay leading to less efficient security for everyone.

Just look up Market Failure.  The private market is less efficient than the government when there is a monopoly, monopsony, externalities, incomplete information, and 'public' goods.

http://www.economist.com/research/economics/alphabetic.cfm?term=marketfailure#marketfailure

Its a free market economics website, and it tells you the only way to provide certain goods is through taxation.

How did I miss this thread?

AnywayI've been thinking about this and models you could relate the USA system too. Yes the NHS costs £98Bn ($162Bn) and that covers a population that is around 5 to 6 times smaller than the USA over a much smaller land area that results in a far higher population density. The UK would be a bad model for the USA to adopt in this case as it would lead to an inefficient healthcare system.

If a study is to be conducted to find an existing model that would closely resemble what a good USA social healthcare plan would be then the logical choice would be Australia as it bears far more resemblance. It has a population that is sparsely spread out over a large area, with some areas of high population density which is similar to USA, and the government probably has a roughly a similar rate of efficiency as the USA.

To be honest, I can't be bothered with this debate at the moment...

Hard to discuss specifics without specifics.

As it is though it literally sounds like a trojan horse minus the stealth.

My thought is that if people are opposed to a public option right now we shouldn't pass it right now. If down the road people want a public option we can pass it then. Trying to legislate a trigger mechanism is, to me, a way of sugarcoating something people don't want right now to try and shove it through despite their not wanting it.

Put simply I don't think building in tripwires and triggers is the way to run an industry, if the premise is that the public option might be viewed as a good idea down the road then lets vote on it.../gasp...down the road.

I think at bare minimum any trigger idea should include a new vote when the plan is triggered to confirm it, and it should need the same ratio of votes then as it does now.

The only reason people don't want a public option, by and large, is because of scare tactics, though. I mean, yeah, there is a dedicated core of libertarians out there who have a logic behind their reasoning of why big government is bad, but most people are just scared of the Red Spectre.

We'll look back on this and laugh in 50 years, when all the baby boomers (raised in the shadow of the Cold War), are dead, and the large numbers of people who harbor this irrational fear of socialism are out of the system (and the fear-mongers with their own agendas can stop taking advantage of them)

This is very true.

It's already starting to happen. The fact this thing is up for debate at all proves that times are turning over. It's been a long time since Reagan called public helthcare a communist practice (i know he didn't put it quite like that, but it's exactly what he meant).

It will never fly with the Progressive Caucus pulling Pelosi and Obama's strings. The Dems don't understand competition and basic econ. Private corps against the govt option = government advantage b/c they can print $$$. Small bizs who provide healthcare will put ppl on the g.o. because it will add to the bottom line. Medium sized small bizs who provide great private healthcare will be hit with the 8% payroll tax for the new hires that aren't yet covered forcing layoffs adding to unemployment.

"Compassion bills" don't usually end up matching reality. You can see that with the history of the income tax under Roosevelt (only 1% tax we promise!), the Great Society under Johnson, and all the rest of the AA BS including the disastrous CRA.

So your ignoring the OCED report from the last time we had this argument... the one you used as a source but actually proved me correct?

As has to be mentioned in EVERY healthcare thread for some reason.  The WHO's measure of healthcare didn't involve any healthcare factors... and it was so poor they don't even measure it anymore.