This is far too sensible — Universal health coverage as used in France, Belgium can work here. Damn those moderates at the New America Foundation. Perhaps they can merge with the Project for the New American Century instead.
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The most illuminating part of the article for me was that there may be a big difference between “Universal Health Coverage” and “Single Payer Health Coverage.”
Single payer often scares me as I do not expect the Government to solve any of my “problems.”
Having universal coverage sounds great, but I am curious from some of you more well read than me, what are the real downsides to both the patient and practitioner? The article seems to note all the upside.
Almost all number 1 & 2 (with a little of #4 but not too much), as per Anderson and Reinhardt’s work in their “It’s the Prices, Stupid” piece in health Affairs a couple of years back
I would be interested to learn more about how much of the lower cost (as a percentage of GDP) of healthcare in the “shared responsibility” systems in Europe is attributable to the following five factors:
1. Lower administrative costs.
2. Lower income earned by doctors and other healthcare system workers.
3. Lower malpractice related costs (including defensive medicine).
4. Reduced (or even eliminated) opportunity to earn economic profits by drug companies, medical equipment and device manufacturers.
5. Systematic rationing via QALY metrics or deliberate limits placed on the supply of imaging equipment, surgeons, hospital beds, etc.