[dbussone]

Originally Posted by golfing eagles

I too favor a single payer system, but with the caveat that the government is barred from administering its own program, otherwise, cost will go UP

Administrative costs for private insurance run 11-13%, government program insurance runs about 32%---which just goes to prove what we all already know---1 private sector worker can do as much as 3 government workers.

There will be those that go online and see numbers like medicare has a 5% administrative cost, but this is a fallacy. Medicare gets gov't office space, paid for in a different budget. They don't have billing and collection costs--that's in the IRS budget. They don't have mailing cost, office equipment cost, phone cost---I think the GSO covers that. They operate across state lines, which private insurance cannot do. When you add it all up from the different budgets, it comes to about 32%

And according to a BNA study, “Popular comparisons of Medicare and private group health plan ‘overhead’ costs wrongly compare only a part of administrative expenses related to the Medicare program to the whole of private sector administrative expenses for comparable large group health plans.” The report also says that Medicare’s costs for claims administration “are really about the same as claims administration costs in the private large group health plan market.” Moreover, some of Medicare’s general administration costs are expensed elsewhere in the federal budget, and others, like premium taxes, do not apply to the Medicare program. - See more at: Fact Check on Administrative Costs | AHIP Coverage

Finally, the other downside: Your dad may have been correct about the insurance company "choke hold", but that would be traded in for a GOVERNMENT choke hold. I leave it to the reader to decide which is worse

If you want to know how the government runs things, just remember that the FDA allows up to 10% miscellaneous "material" in your hot dog. Think of ObamaCare as the same sort of production process.