Letting states decline a government insurance plan could help unify congressional Democrats

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

That is not how they pay for it. They don't pay for anything. We do.

Well, we the people, and all that.

I'm against a single payer option. The government doesnt do much of anything well, and thats a demonstrable fact.

Well, it's actually a demonstrable fact that the government (Medicare) has done a much better job in terms of containing health care costs than the private insurance industry has.

Since 1970 Medicare’s average annual per enrollee growth rate of 9.6 percent is lower than the growth rate of 11.1 percent for private health insurers.4 On an annual basis this would not be a very great difference, but over thirty years this finding is important.

...

Exhibit 2 also illustrates that over the past three decades Medicare has been more successful than the private insurance industry has in constraining its per enrollee cost growth for personal health care. By 2000 Medicare’s index number for per enrollee costs was 1,544, compared with 2,176 for private insurance. In other words, by 2000 the index for the private market was 44 percent higher than the index for Medicare.

Apparently, the feds don't agree with you. They are loking for ways to combat fraud in the Medicare system.

H.R. 27, The Medicare Fraud Prevention and Enforcement Act of 2009

H.R. 27 would amend title XVIII of the Social Security Act to establish additional provisions to combat waste, fraud, and abuse within the Medicare Program.

http://www.washingtonwatch.com/bills/show/111_HR_27.html

Apparently, you're not reading what the numbers say. Even if the Medicare system has flaws and even with those flaws, the private market has been less effective when it comes to containing costs. Since the numbers that the comparison is based on are actual numbers (i.e. they include the fraud that would make Medicare less effective), the existence of fraud in the Medicare system makes the performance of the private insurance look so much worse. It says that the private insurance cannot even come close to a fraud ridden government system in terms of containing cost - let alone with a well functioning one.

Edited October 26, 2009 by Mr. Big Dog