Quote:
Originally Posted by zuluking
But, IFF, I was held to account for understanding single-payer systems and I found that the measurements used to calculate single-payer health care costs are different than two-tier health care costs. After attempting to normalize the two to something comparable, there is virtually no difference in costs. It appears that proposals and opinions presented by the Physicians for a National Health Program are being quoted as some kind of factual evidence, whereas I have found no actual fact - simply theory and conjecture (not unlike the opposing viewpoint.)
The most objective literature I could find indicated my previous point. There is not enough evidence to support a difference in costs between single-payer and two-tier.
(And please don't ask for the bread crumb trail of my searching and reviewing. Have of it was gleaned from online book review pdfs. Rest assured though that if I could find this stuff, anyone can.)
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I'm not doubting your research--but I think we need to be sure to compare apples to apples here--or rather contrast apples to apples. Meaning that we need to keep the issues of cost and access separate by comparing
1. Single-payer to multiple payer (theoretically, a fully private system is a species of single-payer system and
2. Universal to two-tier.
Let's not muddy those terms up, because they do mean different things.
I'll admit that for me the comparison that instantly comes to mind usually is the U.S. and Canada, neither of which is a single-payer system.
But I guess I'd also be surprised if it weren't
even more complicated than you say--in other words, that the ways of measuring costs differ even between similar systems, making a comparison of two single-payer or two multiple-payer systems very difficult.
Intuitively, I do feel that the greater the complexity the higher the cost when it comes to any sort of program that will take the form of an entitlement, which unless we utterly privatize, health care generally is.