And to Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska, that boogeyman is single-payer health care.
From Face the Nation via the Omaha World-Herald:
“I'm concerned that it's the forerunner of . . . the ultimate single-payer plan, maybe even more directly than the public option,” Nelson said.
I do wish some enterprising reporter would follow that up and ask the Senator just what the hell is wrong with a government-pays insurance system. The docs and nurses and hospitals could still all be private. The overhead costs would drop dramatically if there was only one place where bills needed to be sent, rather than a bunch of different insurance companies. Here's an example of the current system's inefficency: in an article about the Cleveland Clinic in the December 7 issue of Newsweek,
whatever else a government-run health-insurance system would accomplish, it would impose a uniform billing system on the current one, in which [the] clinic's 2,000 doctors require 1,400 clerks to handle their billing.A ratio of nearly 1:1 doctors to clerks? That's insane!
Senator, please think harder.
Posted by Linkmeister at December 13, 2009 09:45 AM | TrackBackWhat is wrong is that it amplifies what is wrong with the current system while putting taxpayers on the hook for the difference between "affordable" and reality.
Virtually every government-run health care system in the world has cost inflation rates similar to those in the US. Those systems, which purport to pay for everything, don't in reality, and are heading for the same kind of cost meltdown as we are here.
Posted by: Ron McMillin at December 13, 2009 03:40 PM