For a capitalistic market to work, you must have many vendors available to a knowledgeable consumer. Neither of these conditions apply. First, care is increasingly provided by medical associations such as Partners Healthcare in Boston. Second, the consumer cannot be knowledgeable. There is no way a lay person can understand the implications of a given treatment. Third, at the moment you need medical care, you are either sick or injured. If you have a sucking chest wound, you do not have the option of which doctor treats you or even which hospital you go to, regardless of their outcome statistics for your medical need.

And if you look at the economic incentives, the ideal is not to get you healthy, but to get you healthy enough so that you can continue to pay the bills but still sick enough to need medical care. I know this is hyperbole, but it _is_ the way the system is set up. And this _is_ the model pharmaceutical companies are following with “lifestyle” drugs such as Viagra and Yaz.

Universal healthcare, otoh, resolves most of these problems. The economics are clearly set up to make you fully healthy. You have freedom to choose your doctor – if every doctor is part of the same organization, to them it doesn’t matter who you see. Which, in fact, is the way it works in England and France – you get assigned to a doctor, but it’s the doctor of your choice.

And as far as economic efficiency goes, the administrative overhead for private health insurance companies is on the order of 15 to 20%; the overhead for Medicare is under 5%.

Last, yes, universal healthcare _will_ mean that healthcare is rationed. Otoh, it is rationed here right now – rationed based on what you can afford to pay. Personally, that makes me very uncomfortable. Plus, if you want treatment outside of what the system will provide for you, you always have the option of doing it the old-fashioned way – paying for it yourself.

Plus, if you lose your job, or get a long-term illness, or start a new job, you know you and your family will still be protected.

So, to sum up, universal single provider health care provides better care, with better outcomes, for a lower cost, with greater personal choice than the current system does or even can provide. Why is this a problem for people?

Thanks for your comments.

The question at hand is whether the Baucus bill will result in the type of premium increases the PWC-AHIP study suggests. My point — and the point of the other people I quote — is that the assumptions of the report make its projections exaggerated; albeit some of the concerns are very real.

Your argument seems to be 1. No one really knows how much the Baucus bill will ultimately cost (I agree); 2. The taxes/fees on health plans aren’t fair (That’s debatable); 3. The surplus projected by CBO is questionable (I’ll defer to CBO, but acknowledge the credibility of your skepticism).