Saturday, September 17, 2011

Which is cheaper - public health care or private health care? Here's some facts.

What are the facts about the costs of publicly paid health care and privately paid health care? Consider these facts with links to the backup data:

All of that is consistent with the hypothesis that public health financing programs can control costs at least as well, if not better, than private ones. In addition to that and as Yglesias wrote, there are the decades of statements by health industry leaders and proponents of private health care that suggest they all know this to be true. You can’t argue low public payments stifle innovation if public payments aren’t below those of the private sector. You can’t argue that low public payments lead to cost shifting if public payments aren’t lower than private ones.

This comes from Ezra Klein's Wonkblog.

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