New York Democratic Congressman Anthony Weiner precipitated a raising of the eyebrow yesterday when he appeared on the Jon Stewart comedy show and, in response to Stewart’s question “is [Senator Joe Lieberman] a dick?” said “Yes, Jon.”
Yuck, yuck. What a card! It’s nice to see another Democratic politician do his utmost to combat “the erosion of civility” that President Obama lamented the other day in a speech.
Congressman Weiner’s appearance on The Daily Show provided ample grounds for an elevated supercilium, but his acquiescence in Stewart’s juvenile vulgarism wasn’t the most objectionable part if his performance. That came a bit later (at about 2.40 in this clip) when Weiner dilated on the merits of the Democratic efforts at “health care reform.”
“We’ve had this experiment for the last 45 years,” Weiner said, “we’ve had Medicare, a single-payer government run health care plan that’s really worked well.” The Congressman went on to assert that medicare operates with a one percent overhead while private health care insurances companies operate with “about a 30 percent overhead” and it is they, the private insurances companies “are the ones that are causing all the problems.”
Your eyebrow should now be up around the middle of your scalp. Leave aside the contention that Medicare “has really worked well.” Focus instead on the lie, the damned lie, the statistic that Congressman Weiner proffered to viewers of The Daily Show: that Medicare operates with 1 percent overhead while private insurance companies operate with “about a 30 percent overhead.”
The supposed discrepancy between administrative cost for Medicare and private health insurance has long been a canard among those who think you are incapable of looking after yourself and wish to hand the federal government another large slice of the economy. Usually, though, the discrepancy is said the be from 3-8 percent overhead for Medicare as compared with 14 to 22 percent for private insurance.
This is the first thing you should know about Congressman Anthony Weiner: he will not be participating in the proposed health care system designed for the common folks. This man is a member of the elites and will continue getting the best medical treatment possible. This dude will not be standing in any lines waiting for medical treatment.
It is also a mistake not to distinguish between large and small picture economics. The economic doctrines of Ludwig Von Mises and Friedrich Hayek are best for the vast majority of people. However, if you a cynical elitist—the works of John Rawls and John Kenneth Galbraith are ultimately right up your alley. They provide the intellectual underpinnings to justify paying elites like Weiner huge salaries accompanied along with the ability to punish dissenters.
One way of dealing with potential biases between a healthcare provider that deals with only one par of the population is to compare universal public care to private costs.
UK public healthcare has an administration overhead of 4%. (source Hansard)
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199697/cmhansrd/vo961203/text/61203w18.htm
US overhead is 31% (source NEJM)
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/short/349/8/768
So, yes there may be a lot of money to be saved by moving towards public health care.
Jon Stewart est un dique.
È un putz, questo Jon Stewart.
I work in a hospital billing office. Yup, billing Medicare. What people think they know about Medicare (or should I say what they don’t know about Medicare) is astounding. I suppose the “low” overhead claim is a claim to efficiency. If they are so efficient why do they constantly reduce reimbursement and benefits but increase Medicare deductibles? This year’s Medicare deductible is $1,100.00 and that isn’t a one time deal for the year like private insurance. Medicare patients pay it for each in-patient stay that is 60 days apart. If they go back into the hospital again within 60 days of the last stay, they do not pay it again. Unless they have a supplement plan it puts quite a dent in their social security checks which for many is their sole source of income. And so the government thinks it knows what an AFFORDABLE public option is? Medicare billing is complicated and time consuming. Their manuals are as clear as mud. If time is money and a larger amount of folks go into a public option that is based on Medicare, hospital and physician costs will go up to meet the additional administrative burden. And no, the reimbursement from an increase in the number of beneficiary claims won’t make up for it. Currently Medicare often pays only a fraction of cost. They rarely pay enough for a hospital to make any profit from their reimbursement. Any profit hospitals make is from private health insurance reimbursement which pays 70% or more of what is charged, not just cost. Some people think hospitals don’t need to make a profit. Are they kidding? What do they think pays for all that high tech, latest in technology equipment and treatment that diagnoses and cures their ills?
re: ” … the statistic that Congressman Weiner proffered to viewers of The Daily Show: that Medicare operates with 1 percent overhead while private insurance companies operate with ‘about a 30 percent overhead.’”
it is likely that Congressman Weiner’s source for this claim is a NYTimes op/ed piece by Prof. Paul Krugman (unfortunately i can’t find a link to it).
interestingly, though Prof. Krugman still claims a substantial cost advantage in the administration of Medicare, in responding to the Heritage Foundation paper he has substantially reduced the claimed advantage to 11% (or, alternatively, 16.7%) vs under-2%: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/06/administrative-costs/
btw, i favor Medicare-for-all (just as i favor police and fire protection, national defense, and public education for all). i don’t, however, favor making ridiculous claims about their supposed greater economic efficiency.