The generally accepted number is that 40% of health care costs are eaten by administration. Essentially, medical offices and insurance companies have armies of employees whose job it is to squabble over who pays for what, and who can deny what.
Whereas the overhead cost on running medicare is a few percent.
So if we were able to magically flip a switch (I realize the transition would be more dificult), that’s 35-37% of costs right there.
Boy, you got me there. I never thought of that. I was thinking assembly line guys were often enticed back to work with CEO-level pay. They should be, though. I’m gonna go occupy something, I’m so mad about this! 
If they get caught. And of course, you have to prove they were certain someone would die.
And I’ll address this as a lot. No, I don’t think it’s a game of whack-a-mole. Companies do looks at the civil lawsuits levelled against other companies. And they then use that to calculate risk assessments and a cost-benefit ratio. And then they go ahead and do the polluting or skimp on the safety anyway. Did you read up on Asbestos litigation?
Let’s put this another way. Companies right now are polluting, pumping carcinogens into the air, and producing knowingly unsafe items for the market. Our current system to fight that involves both regulations and civil litigation. If we take away half of that enforcement structure - the regulations - do you think the companies will pollute more, or less? Hint : Their expected costs for doing so will go down.
So, the cite says that after the worst real estate crash in recent history, home prices have plummeted. That’s not such earth shattering news. And the prices are low because of the recession. It’s not a good starting point for discussion.
And it misses my original point anyways, which was if the average family bought a 700 sq. foot house with no central heat or A/C, that would be a much cheaper home and that family would have much more equity in it. That’s not a function of any type of inequality of income redistribution. It just means that the average worker can’t get the best of the best luxuries in homes as these new amenities come out. But we expect them.
A/C used to be a luxury for wealthy people. Now landlords can get in trouble if they don’t immediately fix A/C when it is hot outside. Again, high expectations of what is “normal.”
Generally accepted by whom?
And then we have the inconvenient truth where we see that the number from a reliable source might be more like 7%, and the savings available 5%. Even if you throw in profits, you might get to 8% savings.
I’d love for the 40% to be true, because it would make my case for single payer so much easier. But I can’t find any real source for that number. It seems like it’s like the “eight glasses of water a day, minimum.” that was all the rage a few years ago.
So even if we can’t turn the car around at the top of the mountain, we should easily be able to drive back through all the switchbacks in reverse, nor problem, right?
How you got to where you are tells you something about how to get back, but not nearly everything.
Even the most radical changes wouldn’t actually reduce the cost in the short run to anything like what they are in Australia. The best you can promise is that you will have some small short term benefits (like a reduction in admin costs) and then a slowing of the growth rate to something at or slightly below GDP. In 30 years you might close most of the gap.
But you know, that’s not a very sexy thing to sell to the public. Let’s make this massive change now, and in 30 years we will be much better off.
The smaller, incremental changes, like ObamaCare are less risky, and a lot less impactful too. They are more likely to ameliorate some of the gaps in the system, than to reduce costs. Most of the cost reductions in ObamaCare are illusory, and have nothing to do with changes to the system. You could reduce (or slow the growth of) Medicare/Medicade reimbursement rates without any of the insurance changes.
No, actually, I believe there is a fairly strong legal precedent along the lines of contributory negligence. People don’t have to die to be damaged, and they don’t have to be damaged on purpose for the damager to be liable for, well, damages.
Once more:
Let’s distinguish between the kinds of laws that say you can’t produce pollution that is damaging to the environment and to people, and the kind of regulations that say you have to put XYZ air scrubber on your factory chimney, and again the kind of meaningless goals like reducing carbon emissions by 2% over the next 20 years. The first kind is both necessary and useful; the second kind can work to a degree but it has fatal flaws that I’ve already discussed; the third type is virtually meaningless, although beloved of international conferences.
And again:
Currently there is relatively little litigation because people depend on (ineffectual, inadequate, unevenly applied) regulations. Also (and I am no expert in this) I believe that there are significant barriers to private lawsuits in this area. Remove the barriers, make it clear that the problems can and should be addressed through litigation, and lawyers will spring up out of the ground ready to file and pursue them to the nth degree.
You clearly don’t believe this is true. My contention is that this approach would be more effective and more fair, as well as better for both industries and individuals. I can’t prove it from experience, because these conditions don’t exist and as far as I know have never existed.
Roddy
By Jove, I think you’re on to something. Let’s take it on home!
I wouldn’t address it. The environment is fine where I live, and if someone else lives somewhere that’s unhealthy, they can always move.
I wouldn’t address it. How is it my problem if other people’s kids can’t afford a good education? I worked hard to send my kids to private school, like they should’ve done.
I wouldn’t address it. Why do I care if poor people get sick and die? I have good insurance, and so would they if they’d bothered to get a good education and a real job.
Golly jeepers, solving problems the Conservative Way™ sure is easy!
Which is exactly what I said and the goal of the proposal. You wouldn’t even want to reduce spending by half on a shorter time frame, it would destroy an entire industry and leave a large chunk of the population unemployed.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=14569953&postcount=64
So you reject climate science? If the icecaps melt, we all die. Who sues the company then? The Martians?
I believe there are not, and request a cite.
It’s a good starting point for the discussion if the weakening middle class (and the policies that caused that) contributed to the recession.
Then your original point was useless. In 1945, I would have $75,000 equity in my home. in 2011, I would have $60,000 equity in my home. It doesn’t matter what bells and whistles the two homes have, it’s a plainly obvious fact that economic conditions have deteriorated for me to the point where I don’t have as much money to invest in home ownership.
That you’re trying to counter-argue that I could save a lot of money by limiting myself to state of the art 1945 technology is moot.
Actually Liberal Strawmanning seems to be easier still.
Regards,
Shodan
You can keep posting these links, but even what I said is just an assumption. I am not showing any math and neither are you.
Let me repeat. There is no assurance that if we set up a Netherlands- or Switzerland-type system, that we will get their costs. And frankly what you are proposing isn’t an AnyCountry-like system with your optional amounts. For countries that don’t have single payer, they do have mandatory coverage with market (sometimes heavily regulated, sometime less so) premiums. Any option which allows you to buy insurance by pay a zero premium and take the risk that you end up in a hospital where they have to let you die, because your insurer does not have to pay is just nuts. It is not going to work, because the populace will demand that “someone” provide the care. And from there it is the race to the bottom again. Everyone opts to pay $0.
If you are making the case that we can get costs down to Netherlands, Australia, Switzerland, Japan, whatever, your are going to have to restrict yourself the the models they have adopted. None of this escape clause nonsense to sell it to the people that totally guts the logic of the system.
We also need to be honest about the cost of subsidies that we will need to provide to people who cannot afford the premiums. You are going to need to tax away a good portion of the benefit that the employers would receive from not having to provide health care to provide the subsidy. Something like a high percentage payroll tax on the first $30,000 in income.
I never said that it was anything other than an assumption. After doing some amount of research, I came to the belief that the cause of inflated health care costs are due to employers offering health insurance as a perk of employment. That’s supposition. Removing this would allow prices to come back into line with the rest of the world. That’s an assumption.
Pointing out that I could be wrong in my suppositions and assumptions isn’t very meaningful. Of course I could be.
Nor did I say that it would. I said, again, that disallowing health insurance as a facet of employment would be the driving force towards reducing costs. And of course, that’s only if you accept my hypothesis for why we are where we are.
That’s an assumption on your part, which could well be incorrect as well. My assumption would be that when people call the insurance agency to buy their plan, the insurance agency will point out the common side-effect of death among those who choose to enroll under the free plan and the insurance agency will try to upsell them. Given that a side-effect of death is rather abhorrent to the majority of people, I would be inclined to believe that the grand majority of people would allow themselves to be upsold.
Not it it is hollow threat. Are you really going to die in the ER because you don’t have coverage. You don’t now, and you will not under any plan that gets implemented. No one is going to allow it. Then we are back to the only-the-suckers-will-buy-insurance scenario.
And all this is because we don’t want to admit up front that it will cost some large number per person to purchase the coverage that will not be provided through the employer any more. And we will have to subsidize a large proportion of people because they cannot afford it. And this subsidy will cost money, and we will need to tax someone to pay for it.
And you wonder why people aren’t just backing this plan as a sure-fire winner.
And strawmanning is so much easier for liberals than it is for you guys! We don’t even have to make anything up! 
Coverage isn’t provided through the employer today. There isn’t a magical pool of money in the sky which the employer grants towards you without any demerit to themselves. The employer has taken part of your wage and decided what to do with it, in the form of pointing it at health insurance. But they aren’t splitting your wage into other-needs and health-needs critically. The end result is always, still, going to be that your wage goes towards paying for your health insurance and that if you want to be able to afford a better insurance plan, you need to work for a company which offers more. That hasn’t changed.
How does your first paragraph represent a “misunderstanding” of productivity? Ten men used to assemble widgets by hand, then the factory bought a WidgetMaker which can be operated by one man. Productivity has increased, brought about by the company investing in the machine and the remaining worker having the “sweat and smarts” to operate and maintain the machine.
I don’t see how that description conflicts with your second paragraph.
The “sweats and smarts” referred to the incorrect interpretation of what the indisputable trend in increased worker production means. The incorrect interpretation I referred to is that workers are working harder or smarter (or something), and then, having become more productive, having produced this great benefit for their company and society, how are they thanked? How are they thanked, I ask you? Well, they aren’t! :sniff: It’s a very sad tale. It’s an illogical reference to the generation of workers who produced this gain in productivity, the guys who made it possible by working harder, or smarter, or something. (Not to the guys who remain, manning the new widget makers.)
It typically comes up in the income inequality threads. People stumble onto some link that shows (correctly) that during the period where this “inequality” grew, so did worker productivity. A productivity that through their interpretation was the result of the work, the “sweat and smarts” of the workers in question. “How is that fair?” it would be asked. “They did their part, producing all that great new productivity, and what did they get for their efforts? Nothing!” This is the complete misunderstanding of the term I referred to. A point was scored here, that person thinks–a clear injustice uncovered.
Again, worker productivity is simply the ratio of output to worker hours. Period. It doesn’t mean that any worker anywhere did a damn thing different (or that they didn’t). It doesn’t imply that our grandparents were a bunch of slackers, too dumb or lazy to produce that level of work. It means that we are now producing more stuff, with less workers, period. Automation has had a profound impact on this, and is pointed to as a way for people to understand their misinterpretation of the term. In your scenario, the one guy remaining need not be working any harder than he did before. Hell, it’s possible he’s working more leisurely. And even so, there has been an ENORMOUS gain in worker productivity at the widget factory.