Conover also presents a good case that this heavy regulatory burden is actually responsible for patient deaths:4,000 more
Americans die every year from costs associated with health services regulation (22,000) than from lack of health insurance (18,000).Obviously, the regulatory burden imposed by Washington will increase dramatically if the government is given full control of our health care system. Thus, socialized medicine””or “single-payer health care” as its advocates would have it””would give us a higher level of health care inflation combined with a higher than necessary rate of patient mortality.
Related posts:
- Single-payer: Is the ivory tower this naive?
- Single-payer and the Indian Health Service
- Single payer to fix malpractice?
- Single-payer: Read the fine print
- Michael Moore an obstacle to single-payer?
- America’s failed attempt at a single-payer system, the Indian Health Service
- Single-payer in Sweden: A cautionary tale
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This clearly presumes facts not in evidence. The “regulatory burden” I had when practicing in the Air Force was MUCH less than I have now. The easiest patients for me to take care of in regards to “regulatory burden” at the moment are my Medicare and Medicaid patients. It is the private insurance companies that are (1) hard to get credentialed with (2) likely to deny payment for legitimate claims and (3) likely to impose unnecessary delays to receiving care. Please show data showing that such things are actually happening to patients with VA and military care rather than extrapolating wild speculation.
Facts aren’t really Kevin’s thing. He’s an advocate on this issue, like malpractice. Anecdotes and scare tactics will do just fine, thank you.
Evan, Evan, Evan …
The easiest patients for me to take care of …
Fallacy of composition: Even if this is an accurate description YOUR experience, it does not follow that it applies ALL providers in the system.
It is the private insurance companies that …
Straw man: Nowhere do I argue that private insurance companies are paragons of virtue.
Please show data showing …
There are, of course, mountains of data damning the VA. Here’s a good place to start:
https://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa207.html
Catron,
So … private insurance is bad. In what way are you and Kevin and others who are against universal coverage working to get rid of it? I see so many articles linked about how bad single payer is, yet I also see horror stories about insurance. The commentary on the single payer is always how awful it would be, but the insurance ones always attribute problems to bad individual companies or individual persons. Why is nobody asking for private insurance to go away as well if it’s just as bad.
As for the mountains of Data on Cato … I call bias. Here’s some real, peer-reviewed medical studies:
http://tinyurl.com/3yoqux
http://tinyurl.com/3cemo9
http://tinyurl.com/2voe3a
These studies are germane to the exact thing you are asking about. So explain again how single payer will increase mortality?
My biggest issue with single payer is that its a pipe dream. It’s right up there with O.J. finding the real killers. If United healthcare can pay their CEO a 100 million dollar bonus, what do you think the entire industry would do if this ever became a remote possiblility. Spending like you have never seen before. Look at the tremendous amounts of money the current presidential candidates are racking up and that tells you all you need to know. Money = Votes and those that support single payer don’t have it, period.
Evan,
You’re still off in the weeds. It’s not about whether the insurance companies are minions of Mephistopheles. It’s about imposing a “single-payer” model that may well be worse than the system we have.
The regulatory issue is real. Indeed, I’m betting that after a few years of P4P, you’ll come over to the dark side.
Kevin, then why hasn’t socialized medicine contributed to patient mortality and healthcare inflation in all the other developed countries of the world??? We would not be reinventing the wheel here, ya know, and the world’s developed countries have mortality and life expectancy statistics better than ours. In addition, they don’t waste 20% or more of each healthcare dollar on administrative costs, as we do now with our illogical and dysfunctional multiple payer system. (WHY oh WHY is the U.S. always the last to “catch on….”)
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