On 2009-09-04, erschroedinger@gmail.com <erschroedinger@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sep 3, 4:17?pm, Brent <tetraethylleadREMOVET...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> On 2009-09-03, erschroedin...@gmail.com <erschroedin...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> >> LOL. What in the US federal government runs as lean as 15% overhead?
>>
>> > Uh, Medicare's overhead is 3% while private insurance companies run
>> > around 15%.
>>
>> Cite? ?I'll wager if those numbers weren't pulled out of your ass that
>> government math was used to create them.
>>
>
> According to the latest annual report of the Medicare board of
> trustees (these reports are required by law), Medicare spent $431.5
> billion dollars in 2007. Of this amount, $6.3 billion was
> administrative expenditures (or overhead).

There's the first issue. It's a percentage of what they spent. As a
government program with FORCED participation that calculation is going
to look good simply because of the nature of overhead costs.

> If we do the math, we
> determine that Medicare?s overhead was 1.5 percent of its
> expenditures. Other data presented in the trustees report indicate
> Medicare?s overhead was about 2 percent throughout this decade, about
> 2 percent during the 1990s, and about 3 percent in the 1980s.

Ahh... so they didn't include all the work that they force on others.

> During the last three or four decades, the comparable figure for
> health insurance companies has been 20 percent while the comparable
> figure for self-insured firms has been about 10 percent. I think it is
> safe to say all reasonable people would agree that 2 percent is
> ?lower? than 20 percent and 10 percent.

According to you I guess. I'll wager 'private overhead' has a
drastically different definition than 'medicare overhead'.

> Among experts who publish in peer-reviewed journals, the 2-percent
> figure for Medicare is widely (probably universally) accepted. I offer
> two examples of expert opinion from the conservative side of the
> health care reform debate: the Lewin Group, and a coalition of
> organizations and individuals that signed an open letter to Congress
> in 1999.
>
> The Lewin Group is a consulting firm which is on record criticizing
> single-payer proponents. It often makes unjustifiably favorable
> assumptions about the cost-cutting abilities of health insurance
> companies. It was purchased by United Health Group last year. It uses
> the 2-percent figure to estimate Medicare?s overhead costs and the
> overhead costs of Medicare-like systems (cf the Lewin Group?s reports
> for the states of California and Colorado).
>
> In 1999, a coalition of conservative and middle-of-the road groups and
> individuals signed an open letter to Congress begging Congress to
> raise Medicare?s administrative spending level to the level ?found in
> the private sector? so that Medicare would be better equipped to
> function like a managed care insurance company. The coalition included
> the Heritage Foundation, the former Health Insurance Association of
> America (the trade group that represented the non-HMO wing of the
> health insurance industry), the American Enterprise Institute, the
> Concord Coalition, and Wellpoint Health Networks.
>
> This coalition stated that Medicare?s overhead was less than 2
> percent. Here is how they put it: ?The latest report of the Medicare
> trustees points out that HCFA?s administrative expenses represented
> only 1 percent of the outlays of the Hospital Insurance trust fund
> [which finances Part A] and less than 2 percent of the Supplementary
> Medical Insurance trust fund [which at that time financed Part
> B]? (Heritage Foundation et al., ?Open letter to Congress and the
> executive: Crisis facing HCFA and millions of Americans,? Health
> Affairs 1999;18(1):8-10, 8). Obviously, the average of these two trust
> funds comes to less than 2 percent.

Without definitions it's not really all that useful. Government and
others in the political realm tend to redefine words to get the results
wanted.

>> >> Your 'successful' cash for clunkers program seems to be running around
>> >> 33% overhead.http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2009/...ita-doan-cash/
>> > Great, someone who believes in Fox News and Santa Claus.

>> Sorry, no. But those who believe 'cash for clunkers' is a good program
>> obviously believe in Santa Claus... that the 'toys' come out of the
>> ether or built by elves with magic or whatever that no resources were
>> taken from other people to provide it.

> Oh, the right-wing "taxes are theft" screed. Well, Doofus, if you
> don't want to be a part of a society and pay for its upkeep, LEAVE.

look, buying my neighbor a new car or his health care or
his food or his home or anything else isn't the upkeep of
society. It's the degrading of society. Your form of taxes is using the
political means to wealth. That is, taking it from the productive
people using the legal violence of the state. It's hiring thugs to
provide the political 'winners' with booty taken from the political
'losers'. It degrades productive work by making those who do not spend
their time in the political realm the effective slaves or serfs of those
who do. Why should anyone engage in productive work when he instead can
use political 'work' to get what he wants from his neighbors?

When political process can be used to provide people with anything they
wish, cars, health care, cheese, whatever, why bother doing anything
else but manipulate the political process? Why should I, or anyone else,
work for a living when by getting a sufficently sized rabble together
and/or appropiate placements of cash can get lots lots more back through
the government? Why serve my fellow man by providing goods and services
at a market price when I can just have my friends in government take the
funds from him and give them to me?

If you think it's the upkeep of society to buy other people goods and
services you are welcome to do that WITH YOUR OWN MONEY, not the money
of other people. (Remember private chairity?) Aggression agianst your
neighbors (pay these new taxes to provide X to other people or go to
prison) is not upkeeping society, it's destroying it.