Utah

How health insurance parasites have created a health care famine

Sun, 01/04/2009 - 2:27pm — DCblogger

Clark Newhall writing for the Salt Lake Tribune

The price of our privately run, profit-driven medical-industrial complex has caused this famine. About one-third of every dollar going to health care pays for administrative costs -- for utilization reviewers, for computer programmers, for advertising, for sales managers, for executives of all kinds, for billing clerks, for coding clerks, for CEO bonuses in the millions and hundreds of million -- and for profits.

We are not talking about government waste. We are not talking about the cost of actually treating the sick and nurturing the healthy. We are talking only about the cost of running our profit-making health insurance industry.

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I support Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

Per capita health care spending (2007):

United States: $7290
Switzerland: $4417
France: $3601
United Kingdom: $2992
Average of OECD developed nations: $2964
Italy: $2686
Japan: $2581

-- Bob Somerby

The text of HR676 (Medicare For All) as PDF (30 pages). The FAQ. Compare HR3200 with HR676.

Medicare for All would save $350 billion a year (study in New England Journal of Medicine).

In 2003, a young Illinois state senator named Barack Obama told an AFL-CIO meeting, "I am a proponent of a single-payer universal healthcare program*." -- Bill Moyers.

* Medicare For All.

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13:57:03 brucedixon I think my colleague Glen Ford is writing on it this week in BAR so I will just co-sign whatever he says.
22:03:36 Valley Girl I'd sure like Bruce Dixon's take on the Conyers comments. Just emailed him.
21:03:43 lambert Thanks, Jeff.
18:16:03 Jeff W lambert, I wrote to NOW about that Elizabeth Warren video not playing and got a response of sorts back, which I sent to you as a private PM. Just FYI.
02:28:28 hipparchia the first thing they told us my volunteer training: humans are natural born rescuers.
00:18:34 lambert One more study... [url]
23:57:37 lambert Joe Bageant is god. [url]
01:00:54 lambert The actuary was a whistleblower under Bush, too. [url]
00:47:48 hipparchia that's ok, jason stands ready to help smear the actuary quoted in that wapo article [url]
23:16:16 lambert Elders under the bus on Medicare, naturally. [url]
20:11:01 lambert 19:49:09 +100
20:10:18 lambert Capitalism in a world where we will throw as many taxpayers under the bus as necessary....
19:49:09 hipparchia elizabeth warren for president!
02:24:14 Jeff W Elizabeth Warren on the economy on PBS's NOW: you can watch it online here: [url] "If [Congress] gets it wrong, the country we knew is gone."
17:52:53 Davidson So, of course they're not going to show the truth about boxing her in from the beginning.
17:51:57 Davidson Yeah, that was just a comment in general, like, "Not even the RBC decision warranted scrutiny."
15:38:02 lambert That's not the RBC meeting, though. That's the smoking gun, beyond "Smart politics" (Wolfson).
14:17:16 Davidson Notice how everyone still avoids exposing the RBC decision
14:16:04 Davidson Can someone do a post on this? [url]
10:04:26 lambert Jeff, thanks. Fixed.