Health Care Dialog

    Michael Moore was on Hardball with Matthews, I think last night.  This is an interesting clip of the interaction between the two, and I bet the "other side" had had a better spokesperson than the one they got:>)  In recent days, Quinn has weighed in on this as well in a very fine article.  I am anxiously awaiting the church's rise to lead on this issue; sadly, I fear I will be waiting for some time.

Comments

[Bruce]

Jane Quinn has the right approach in looking at this issue. The money that we currently spend paying for insurance companies, whose purpose is to refuse to pay for sick people's healthcare, would more than cover the cost of the uninsured. The only problem with medicare is that it doesn't pay the true cost of care for it's patients. It cost shifts to the private insurance companies, quite a bit. Medicare only pays clinics about 60% of what private insurance pays. It pays hospitals about 95% of what private insurance pay. It probably pays more than private insurance for drugs, due to the stupid deal the republicans cut with the drug companies when they passed the drug coverage bill. The clinics that medicare only pays 60% to have nonphysician overhead cost of 65%, on average. If private insurance was eliminated, medicare would have to step up and cover the true costs of their patients.