Problems of U.S. Health Care Are Rooted in the Private Sector, Despite Right-Wing Claims

By Mark Weisbrot
McClatchy-Tribune Information Services, July 20, 2011

Right-wingers, insurance companies, and other opponents of health care reform in the United States are always looking for ways to blame the government for the failures of our health care system. But the simple truth is that they have it backwards: our problems with health care are firmly rooted in the private sector. That is why the average high-income country – where government is vastly more involved in health care – spends half as much per person on health care as we do, and has better health outcomes.

That is why even Medicare – which has to pay for health care services and drugs at costs inflated by our dysfunctional private health care sector – has still proven to be much more efficient than private insurance.

The most effective way to insure everyone and make our health care system affordable would have been to expand Medicare to everyone, while beginning the process of reducing costs through negotiation with, and restructuring incentives for, the private sector. The private insurance companies use up hundreds of billions annually on administrative costs, marketing, and other waste – which is what you would expect from companies who maximize profit by insuring the healthy and trying to avoid paying for the sick.

It remains to be seen whether the PPACA will be a step toward more comprehensive, effective reform that gives us Medicare for all. In the meantime, the right will try to blame the government and the legislation itself for rising health care costs and other failures of our health care system. But in fact these result from the legislation not having gone far enough to rein in the private sector.

(Mark Weisbrot is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, in Washington, D.C.)

http://www.cepr.net/index.php/op-eds-&-columns/op-eds-&-columns/problems-of-us-health-care-are-rooted-in-the-private-sector-despite-right-wing-claims

When it seems that we are making so little progress on the reform front, it is reassuring to see that PNHP and our single payer colleagues are not alone in spreading the Medicare for all message.