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- Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive
- Path: sparky!uunet!gumby!wupost!mont!pencil.cs.missouri.edu!daemon
- From: harelb@math.cornell.edu (Harel Barzilai)
- Subject: "STRONG FAMILY VALUES" (III) (2)
- Message-ID: <1992Aug19.214509.9320@mont.cs.missouri.edu>
- Followup-To: alt.politics.elections
- Originator: daemon@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
- Sender: news@mont.cs.missouri.edu
- Nntp-Posting-Host: pencil.cs.missouri.edu
- Organization: misc.activism.progressive on UseNet ; ACTIV-L@UMCVMB
- Date: Wed, 19 Aug 1992 21:45:09 GMT
- Approved: map@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
- Lines: 107
-
- ******************************************************************
- Addenda:
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-
- ============================================================
- Medical costs as percentage of Gross Domestic Product:
-
- 1980 1989 increase
-
- U.S.: 9.2% 12% + 30 percent
- Canada: 7.4% 8.9% + 20 percent
- ============================================================
-
-
- ============================================================
- Percentage of premiums consumed by overhead:
-
- Private Insurance Companies: 12% (overhead & profits)
-
- Public payers (e.g. Medicare, Medicaid): 3%
-
- Canadian provincial insurance plans: under 1%
- ============================================================
-
- ==================================================
- Billing, administration, and insurance
- overhead as percentage of total spending:
-
- U.S.: 22%
- Canada: 13.7%
- U.K. 11.1%
- ==================================================
-
-
-
- ******************************************************************
- -> [Send the 1-line email GET HEALTH INSURANC ACTIV-L [sic]
- -> to LISTSERV@UMCVMB.BITNET for much more documentation and info]
- ******************************************************************
-
-
-
- ##################################################################
-
- Even today, the general population often fails to understand its
- inner wants. The current debate over health care provides some
- useful illustrations. A case in point is a major article in the
- _Boston Globe_ (Feb. 9) by Thomas Palmer, an outstanding
- journalist, well to the liberal side of the spectrum. Palmer
- opens by reporting that almost 70% of Americans prefer a
- Canadian-style health-care system, according to polls. But they
- are wrong, for two reasons.
-
- The first reason is technical: it was clarified by President
- Bush, who "emphasized the importance of avoiding the problems of
- bureaucratized, universal-care systems like Canada's." It is a
- matter of logic that government-run systems are inefficient, and
- the fact that the highly bureaucratized private sector system in
- the US is vastly more inefficient is therefore irrelevant. It
- is, for example, of no relevance that Blue Cross of Massachusetts
- employs 6680 people, more than are employed in all of Canada's
- health programs, which insure 10 times as many people; or that
- the share of the health dollar for administrative costs is over
- twice as high in the US as in Canada. <<<NB: Nancy Watzman,
- _Multinational Monitor_, May 1992.>>> Logic cannot be confuted
- by mere fact.
-
- More interesting is the second reason, which is "spiritual."
- There is a "difference in outlook" north and south of the border;
- there are "theoretical differences that students of the two
- nations see in the psyches of the average American and Canadian."
- These students explain that the Canadian system would cause "the
- kind of rationing of health care that Americans would never
- accept... The US system rations by price; if you can afford it,
- it's there. Canadians ration their health care by providing the
- same care for everyone and simply making those seeking elective
- or less urgent procedures wait."
-
- Plainly, that would not accord with "American-style impatience,"
- one "student of the two nations" explains. Imagine, he says,
- that "no matter how poor you are, you will sit in a hospital bed
- and receive care as the richest in your community. No matter
- what contacts you have and no matter how rich you are, you can
- get no better than that." Americans would never accept that, we
- learn from this expert (incidentally, the president of a
- health-care consulting firm). Further insights into the American
- psyche are given by the deputy director of a trade group of
- commercial health insurers. The 70% of Americans who don't
- understand their own psyches are not sampled; obviously, they too
- need instruction in self-awareness.
-
- [From _Year 501: World Orders Old and New (part II)_, Z magazine.]
-
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- "Z is an independent, progressive monthly magazine of critical thinking
- on political, cultural, social, and economic life in the United
- States. It sees the racial, sexual, class, and political dimensions
- of personal life as fundamental to understanding and improving
- contemporary circumstances; and it aims to assist activist efforts to
- attain a better future."
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