Norm Coleman is holding an event tomorrow morning at Saint John’s Hospital in Maplewood to speak to “business leaders” about health care. Registration is free, but space is limited. The registration form also allows for questions for Coleman to be submitted in advance.
I assume things like his votes for making it illegal for Medicare to negotiate prices with drug companies in 2003 and in 2005 and his votes against an amendment that would have granted that right might not come up. Coleman gets hundreds of thousands of dollars from Health Care and Big Pharma and taxpayers flip the bill on the $3.7 billion more we pay for drugs. No surprise that this event is for “business leaders” and otherwise unannounced to regular taxpayers. See the full invite here.
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Norm should take Al Franken’s advice. The best thing we can do for businesses is institute universal single-payer healthcare, to drastically reduce businesses’ payments for benefits.
Jeff Rosenberg -
Changing the financing of healthcare won’t fix healthcare. Financing is one piece. You change the financing, and you still have our healthcare system which is in some respects terribly broken and in other respects incredibly innovative.
The solution is letting patients drive and direct more of their health care experience, and providing reason for clinicians and administrators to innovate more.
The statistics citing the administrative savings of single payer are overstated. There is opportunity for improvement, yes. But not to the degree that single payer advocates claim. And it is a fraction of the saving that could be realized by a more fundamental revamp of our system.
For the record, I do not advocate the current healthcare system which is about 50% government funded and about 30% employer-based. We both agree on that.
Dan-
Saying the administrative savings of single payer are overstated is asinine.
From the New England Journal of Medicine
“Results In 1999, health administration costs totaled at least $294.3 billion in the United States, or $1,059 per capita, as compared with $307 per capita in Canada.”
Do I really have to keep debunking your asinine statments with THE SAME STUDY TIME AFTER TIME?
The Manhattan Institute debunked that myth long ago. The canadian estimate doesn’t account for the cost of collecting additional tax dollars. Our Government ain’t exactly efficient. It costs about 20 cents to get $1 to Washington. Your admnistrative savings are killed right there.
Plus, we can get administrative savings without shifting to a publicly financed system. Let’s focus on that instead.
Yes, Dan, what a great idea. Let’s keep the parasitic insurance corporations involved in the health care system but we’ll make them more efficient. Much of the administrative costs are from the insurance corporations not efficiently collecting their money. Well, maybe not.
Face it Dan, you are on exactly the wrong side of this issue and I think you know it. As a businessman, who I’m assuming isn’t involved the insurance industry, I would think you would immediately see the single payer system as the most cost efficient method. Getting the insurance industry out of the system will save billions.