health expenses in US go to profit shills

[Chris Brady <cdbrady@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

It could be argued that the Canadian health care system is socialistic,
or not, but on a range it is more socialistic than the racket in the
USA.  I send this not so much as to extoll Canada's health care system,
which is still clearly capitalist as it is embedded in the economy of a
G8 state, but to show that the American system is criminal.  What is not
even alluded to in the following article is how many people in the USA
are denied health care, health insurance, and/or pay premium prices
because they can't afford insurance and thus effectively underwrite the
care of their wealthier fellow citizens who do have insurance and use
the same facilities.

Canada-U.S. gap in health care grows

By BRIAN LAGHI, Globe and Mail, Thursday, Aug. 21, 2003

Ottawa ? The overhead cost of operating the United States health-care
system is more than three times that of running Canada's, and the gap is
getting bigger, new research says.

The study, to be published today in the New England Journal of Medicine,
puts the administrative cost of the U.S. system at $294-billion (U.S.)
per year, compared to about $9.4-billion in Canada. That translates to a
per-person cost of $1,059 in the U.S. and $307 in Canada. A similar
study, conducted in 1991, put per-capita costs in the U.S. at $450 and
Canadian costs at one-third of that.

The study, whose lead author is Dr. Steffi Woolhandler of the Harvard
Medical School, indicates that Americans spend more on administrative
costs because of its many private companies from whom they buy their
insurance. The companies increase paperwork by creating multiple
claims-processing offices, while Canadian doctors send their claims to a
single insurer, the government. Private insurers also spend money on
marketing and underwriting, costs that the Canadian system doesn't have
to bear.

Entire article:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20030821.uheal0821/BNStory/National