Jonathan Cohn of
The New Republic reports:
If you are one of those people who believes the government, rather than for-profit corporations, should provide all Americans with health insurance, then you haven't had much trouble finding evidence to support your view. "Single-payer" systems, as these schemes are known, don't fritter money away on marketing, profits, and the constant efforts insurers make to enroll only healthy, cheap-to-insure customers. Single-payer systems also offer free choice of doctor and hospital, a privilege your typical managed-care enrollee covets. Most important of all, the people who get insurance from single-payer systems seem to be rather happy. Just go ask the citizens of France, who enjoy a system that combines legendary convenience with cutting-edge cancer care.
I guess The New Republic forgot about this gem from
The New York Times titled
New York Medicaid Fraud May Reach Into Billions on July 18, 2005:
New York's Medicaid program is by far the most expensive and most generous in the nation. It spends far more - now $44.5 billion annually - than that of any other state, even California, whose Medicaid program covers about 55 percent more people. New York's Medicaid budget is larger than most states' entire budgets, and it spends nearly twice the national average - roughly $10,600, more than any other state - on each of its 4.2 million recipients, one in every five New Yorkers.
That generosity was born of good intentions when Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller signed the program into law in 1966, following the state's tradition of creating big antipoverty programs. But Medicaid has become far more than the child of that altruism, having morphed into an economic engine that fuels one of the state's biggest industries, leaving fraud and unnecessary spending to grow in its wake.
There are no precise estimates for the cost to the state's program. Officials who have spent their careers chasing unscrupulous doctors and other providers in New York Medicaid say the losses to taxpayers here are probably higher than typical estimates of overall health care fraud. The Government Accountability Office in Washington and others have estimated that 10 percent of all health care spending nationally is lost to "fraud and abuse."
Jonathan Cohn also forgot to mention that government workers who would administer the single payer plan are much more expansive to employ than private sector workers.
The Washington Post reports:
We've often heard that civil servants forgo higher private-sector salaries in order to serve the nation selflessly. Many federal bureaucrats are indeed hardworking, but new statistics show that they are anything but underpaid.
The Bureau of Economic Analysis released data this month showing that the average compensation for the 1.8 million federal civilian workers in 2005 was $106,579 -- exactly twice the average compensation paid in the U.S. private sector: $53,289. If you consider wages without benefits, the average federal civilian worker earned $71,114, 62 percent more than the average private-sector worker, who made $43,917.
Pretending a monopoly can be efficient than private sector competition is laughable.
