Fiscal Safety: Buy Nothing On Time If Possible
Irrspective of whether this country continues to have several classes
of care (1), overall the plan must pay its way. At the moment, such is not the case: The unfunded liability is
reckoned in the trillions, some say as high as 93 trillion dollars if Medicare and Social Security are considered together.
Funding for medicine is balkanized in the USA.
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(1) Congress has a plan for itself, a smorgasboard of ~8 choices;
The military has
a plan; the VA is a plan; Medicare is a plan; SHCIP is a plan
for children; Medicaid is a plan for the poor; the IHS
is a plan; private insurance takes ~25% profit from those who can afford to pay.
The percentage of dollars entering each plan
which reaches the patients is never stated, although we know that for private plans only about 75% reaches the patient.
What do we gain from paying for several overlapping plans, beyond administrative expense? How much administrative expense
can we afford?
