Wednesday, September 20, 2017

Business leaders starting to support single-payer healthcare

So says Wendell Potter, former head of corporate communications for the global health insurance company Cigna. Recent polls show that 60% of Americans favor singly-payer government healthcare. And now business leaders are joining the bandwagon. E.g., Warren Buffet and his Republican vice-chair think it's better than insurance companies because it can effectively control rising costs. There's also a group of business leaders fighting for single-payer: Business Leaders Transforming Healthcare. They researched other countries with single-payer and discovered they all do a better job at controlling costs. Private insurers serve no useful purpose and just add costs to the system.

Some large employers are in fact by-passing insurance companies and negotiating bundled payments directly with healthcare providers. However small companies and individuals don't have that sort of bargaining power. Hence a government program bundles all of them under one umbrella, which saves costs just as in the large employer bundles. Hence single-payer is a viable solution for the rest of us.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.