More Q&A on socialized health care

Anyway:
Gnote wrote:
When there is competition in an insurance system, there will always be lawyers.

There are always going to be lawyers, period. Nationalizing one industry is not going to stop Tort cases, nor will it even begin to lower the costs of lawyer fees (especially if those lawyers continue to work on a contingency). All nationalizing it will do is mask those costs by distributing it over a wider base. I prefer to control the costs in the first place.

Quote:
I'm not trying to demonize lawyers (not that I wouldn't have reason to). I'm simply stating that where competition exists in an insurance market, there will always be someone to sue. Patients suing the insurer, insurers suing patients, doctors suing insurers, insurers suing doctors, insurers suing the government, and the list goes on and on.

You forgot the single biggest market: Patients suing doctors. That's precisely why Doctors carry malpractice and liability insurance (which, to the best of my knowledge, we are not suggesting to nationalize), and a SIGNIFICANT reason that the cost of healthcare has skyrocketed. Are you honestly suggesting these kinds of suits would dissapear by nationalizing it? The only way that would be true is if you blanket the industry with sovereign immunity, which doesn't solve the problem at all, it just makes it impossible to seek retribution.

Quote:
Then you need secretaries for the lawyers - hell, you probably need a warehouse just to store all of the files

There is nothing to suggest that this would change in the slightest just by nationalizing the industry. You'd still have all the above claim scenarios, with equally many lawyers.

Quote:
Every insurance company needs an entire department dedicated to processing the latest lawsuit.

Yes, it's called "Claims". It'd be hard to run an insurance company with no department to determine coverage and claim processing.

Quote:
These are just some of the ways that administration snowballs in a multi-payer system.

These aren't unique to a multi-payer system, they are inherant in any system that attempts to pool risk. It's 100% downright false to assume that malpractice litigation (and, subsequently, lawyers working on a contingency basis) would decrease simply because we nationalize the healthcare industry.

VForVendetta wrote:
Also, these private pharmceutical companies could corrupt the health care system as well by buying off doctors and attempting to establish monopolies while preventing cheaper, more efficient drugs from entering the market.

And what you seem to be unable to grasp is that what you just describe is a function of government intervention. What's the most effective way for a company to prevent drugs from hitting the market? Establishing a patent and limiting the supply through government intervenmtion. That's precisely what I am saying: the pharmaceutical companies have been granted too much power, but that power can only come through subsidies, tax breaks, patents, and the like via the government. You don't see Advil trying to get Tylonol taken off the shelves, do you? Why? Because they are generic ibuprofen drugs that are OTC and without a patent. They are readily available in any corner store in the US, and NOBODY complains that Tylonol or NyQuil is Price Gouging. Without the interference in the market forces that the government inherantly represents, competition drives the price down.

andres wrote:
If the government payed for everyone's bills, then the system would already be socialized and the cost of healthcare in the US would fall.

They wouldn't fall, they would be masked and distributed. Big difference.

exergenic wrote:
One of the reasons that a private health insurance market will consistently fail that has not yet been mentioned in this thread (if I have read it correctly) is the natural propensity toward information asymmetry. People generally know more about their medical history and illness trends within their family than insurers, and may choose not to disclose this information. Firms are at an immediate disadvantage, and over time must increase premiums.

That's why Underwriters generally re-assess a policy every year, taking in to consideration claim history, health, age, and several other factors. Over time, that premium should adequately reflect the risk that customer represents (actually, it might be significantly lower if the company is operating at an underwriting loss due to competition.) Risk analysis is a big part of the insurance industry, and nationalizing it essentially eliminates that sector, which I find to be more than a bit troubling.

exergenic wrote:
This is why Singapore proves to be such an interesting case study. At birth each Singaporean is issued a health account into which money is deposited each year by the government. The incentives system here is obvious, and there is some flexibility in severe cases where medical costs are necessarily exorbitant.

That's interesting, I had never heard of that.