Quote:


The increase in national health spending would be $114.2 billion over the 2010 through 2019 period and $527.4 billion over the 2020 through 2029 period.


That cost estimate is complete lunacy. Exactly how much is going to cost to add millions of people to insurance rolls, public or private? Hint: we already know from current experience, $5k-$8k per year. How they estimate $114B for a *decade* is beyond me, unless they plan to only add 2%-3% of the uninsured. My estimate is that adding the uninsured will cost $300B-$400B per *year*, based on known costs.

Most of the problem is that there's very little cost savings: instead there are assumptions people will act against their own interests.

For example, part of this kills off private hospitals on the theory that they siphon off paying customers from public hospitals, resulting in fewer people for public hospitals to overcharge to make up for government mandates.

So far that's true - private hospitals cost about half as much for the same care, and nobody uses a public hospital if they pay the bills and can use a private hospital.

The assumption is that if private hospitals are killed then public hospitals (which are often for-profit) will cut their costs in half and everybody wins. ? I have never heard of prices going down when the competition is shut down, and the bills don't require that a penny of savings be passed on. The democrats assume it will; I assume it won't without force of law.

There's really no substantial savings to be had in the system at all without going to a Euro/Canadian system of rationing and eliminating middlemen (mainly for-profit insurance). Part of the problem with that is that none of the European countries or Canada do any appreciable medical research, except France, and some, especially Canada, get drugs substantially subsidized by much higher US prices. So France is really the only useful model.

My plan would be to eliminate middlemen, which would cost 30% of cost out, and bring drug prices into balance by charging very high taxes on companies that sold similar quantities of drugs in the US for more than other 1st-world countries. (I might exempt France since they do their fair share of medical R&D - they aren't freeloading in that regard). Then, once we prove we really do have a grip on costs, we start paying for uninsured.
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"If they can't picture me with a knife, forcing them to strip in an alley, I don't want any part of it. It's humiliating." - windsock