On Mon, Jul 21, 2008 at 9:36 AM, Max B. Sawicky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > This is all well-taken, but as with Dean it goes to level of spending, > not rate of growth. With zero inefficiency and waste, income growth > and technical progress will expand the demand for health care, and > because it must be tax-financed in great part, that creates a political > problem.
If you institute single payer and most of savings I've mentioned (plus some others: for example the medical system has a bigger direct theft than most - I don't mean stuff that is morally theft - I mean either stuff that is legally fraud (charging for things not delivered) or shrinkage (supplies and equipment walking out the door). ) I think it would be while before you had to worry. Actually during the first few years of single payer transition cost would eat savings. Cost would rise for a few years at the same rate, but coverage would skyrocket and quality would increase. Within a very short time we start seeing low hanging fruit picked. You would have a period where costs dropped drastically. You would have another period where costs dropped slowly. You would have a third period where costs began to rise again. You would have forth period where costs rose more slowly than the economy. It would be fifteen or twenty years to exhaust savings enough for medical costs to start rising faster than the economy again. And by then single payer would be entrenched enough that we could fight to make sure any reactions to the return of medical inflation took place within the context of strengthening not weaking single payer - i.e. either increased funding, or rationing, or cutting fat - not privatization. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
