Dr. Red Tape

From the Nation:

Four hundred billion dollars for the red tape!

It's a staggering sum -- a Pentagon-sized sum. And according to the comprehensive study by researchers from the Harvard Medical School and from Public Citizen that produced this estimate, some $286 billion of that is utter waste -- spending which could be jettisoned overboard by switching to a Canadian-style system. In Canada -- where they spend half as much on health care yet have universal coverage and live two years longer than Americans -- doctors use a single simple form to bill one insurance plan, and hospitals negotiate an annual budget with a single agency. (Compare that to US doctors and hospitals, who must hire enormous staffs to deal with hundreds of Byzantine forms from hundreds of insurance plans).

It is now increasingly clear that the health insurance companies now exist solely to perpetuate their own fat, profitable existences. It's time for them to be bought out by the government, but who has the cajones to push the issue? War hero Kerry? Fighter ace Bush? Somehow I am not filled with hope.

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