Health-care spending in rich countries

AMERICA'S health-care system is the costliest in the world, gobbling up about 16% of the country’s economic output. Comparisons with other rich countries and within the United States show that its system is not only growing at an unsustainable pace, but also provides questionable value for money and dubious medical care. Economists at the OECD found that America does indeed do well on some measures, such as breast-cancer survival rates and cervical-cancer screening, but does worse in others. Infant mortality was 6.7 per 1,000 births in 2007, against an OECD average (excluding Mexico and Turkey) of 4.0. Reforms are being considered to extend coverage for the 49m people with no health insurance, possibly by obliging individuals to buy insurance.
Source: The Economist

Single Payer vs a Public Option #2

Better than my earlier table.. a graphic prepared by Dr. Klein for the Arizona League of Women Voters - click to enlarge:


Found via a comment on Paul Krugman's blog.

Single Payer vs the Kennedy/Dodd Public Option

Read and weep.

The "Public Option" vs. Single Payer Compared
	Single-Payer	"Public Option"
Number Insured	Universal Coverage	Millions remain uninsured or underinsured
Coverage	Coverage for all medically necessary services.	Insurers continue to strip-down policies and increase patients' co-payments and deductibles.
Cost	Redirect $350 billion in administrative waste to care; no net increase in health spending.	Increase health spending more than $1 trillion over 10 years.
Savings	$350 billion in administrative waste. Further systemic savings achieved through negotiated fee schedule with physicians, global budgeting of hospitals, bulk purchasing of pharmaceuticals, rational planning of capital expenditures, etc.	Add further layers of administrative bloat to our health system through the introduction of a regulator / broker "exchange."
Sustainability	Large scale cost controls (global budgeting, capital planning, etc.) ensure that benefits are sustainable over the long term.	Uncontrolled costs ensure that any gains in coverage are quickly erased as government is forced to hike spending or slash benefits.
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"Rationally, single payer is the best system","our system is the worst, most expensive and least effective." - Ex-President Bill Clinton

Health Reform Side by Side Comparisons

"Achieving comprehensive health reform has emerged as a leading priority of the President and Congress. President Obama has outlined eight principles for health reform, seeking to address not only the 45 million people who lack health insurance, but also rising health care costs and lack of quality. In Congress, a number of comprehensive reform proposals have been announced as the debate begins over how to overhaul the health care system.

This interactive side-by-side compares the leading comprehensive reform proposals across a number of key characteristics and plan components. Included in this side-by-side are proposals for moving toward universal coverage that have been put forward by the President and Members of Congress. In an effort to capture the most important proposals, we have included those that have been formally introduced as legislation as well as those that have been offered as principles or in White Paper form. This side-by-side will be regularly updated to reflect changes in the proposals and to incorporate major new proposals as they are announced."

More at the Kaiser Family Foundation: