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http://www.news-sentinel.com/opinion/letters/letter_to_the_editor_banks_is_misinformed_on_health_care_20170816&profile=1049
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LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Banks is misinformed on health care
Wednesday, August 16, 2017 12:01 am
At Congressman Banks' town hall in Auburn recently, he voiced his opposition to single-payer health care, citing a Congressional Budget Office study that showed a $32 trillion cost. Congressman Banks is misinformed. The study was done by the Urban Institute, a Washington, D.C., basked think tank, not by the CBO. The controversial study has been much criticized for faulty assumptions regarding utilization of medical care, overhead costs, and drug costs.
A little history back in the 1970s, the U.S. and Canada had bout the same health care expense, 7 percent a gross domestic product. Canada switched to single payer, we did not. Now, Canada covers everyone, has better outcomes, and spends 11.4 percent of GDP on health care. The cost in the U.S. is 18 percent of GDP. France has the highest rated health care in the world; they spend 11.8 percent of GDP. Japan spends 8.5 percent.
A closer look at tour single payer Medicare shows overhead costs of 2 percent of total costs, vs. 12-14 percent for private insurers. And annual cost increases for 2010-2015 were 1.4 percent for Medicare, and more than double that for private insurance, 3 percent. We have the most expensive health care system in the world.
Recent polls have shown that a majority of Americans (53-60 percent, depending on which poll you look at) want a single payer system. Anyway you slice it, the fact remains that virtually all industrialized nations have single payer systems delivering health care at lower cost and improved outcomes compared to the U.S.
Art Konwinski
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