[PEN-L:9491] Re: Re: RE: Re: Shades of Summers

["Patrick Bond" <pbond@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Max:
> >In the U.S., if we universalized a system where health
> >care was "free," we would see greater increases in the
> >share of GDP devoted to health care.  This ought to
> >raise a concern about whether the foregone output might
> >have been more worthwhile....
> >Socialists have to ration too.
> >
> >mbs

Brad:
> ... I vaguely remember seeing estimates of "medically
> unnecessary and inappropriate" medical care in the U.S. today that
> amounted to a quarter of total spending...

In the mid 1990s there were several interesting radical
poli-econ arguments about the basis for massive increases
in healthcare costs/GDP. O'Connor did a great paper that partly
attributed cost increases to quality increases and longevity; Navarro
argued also I think correctly that the massive overburdening of
health administrative systems during the 1990s coincided with the
fragmentation/diversification of private care and the growing role of
admin-intensive insurance companies/HMOs. I would add that there was
dramatic overaccumulation of capital, in a very classical marxian
sense, in the private US health system.

So Max, wouldn't universal health services a) increase health
costs/GDP due to the O'Connor argument (assuming it made folks live
longer and gave better quality), but b) reduce it (via single-payer
finance/admin savings) due to the Navarro argument, and reduce costs
if it allowed a rational (not managed-care type) shakeout of the
excess capacity that capitalist healthcare has generated?
Patrick Bond
email:  pbond@xxxxxxxxxx * phone:  2711-614-8088
home:  51 Somerset Road, Kensington 2094 South Africa
work:  University of the Witwatersrand
Graduate School of Public and Development Management
PO Box 601, Wits 2050, South Africa
email:  bondp@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
phone:  2711-488-5917 * fax:  2711-484-2729