[PEN-L:9508] Re: Re: Shades of Summers

[frank@xxxxxxxxxxxx (Ellen Frank)]

Max wrote:
>
>The problem remains, however, that under a non-profit
>system, public agencies, non-profit organizations, and
>health care providers of various sorts could still
>have incentives to over- or mis-prescribe, since
>their compensation or general well-being is likely
>to have something to do with their volume, and/or
>the extent to which they employ expensive equipment.
>
>Which again points up the superficiality or limited
>import of ownership per se in how economic stuff happens.
>
	But I don't see how this follows, Max.  The problem, it seems to
me, is that under a single payer plan , the means of medical production
are privately owned, but publicly compensated.  State
ownership, as in UK, would utterly transform the problem.
	In Canada, which also had to cope with private
entreprenuerial medicine, capitation was the solution and
it was vehemently resisted by physicians and hospital administrators.
Dealing with private ownership and self-interested billing practices
is a major problem in state-financed medical care.  I don't have
a lot of faith in the US government to pull it off.  As a student of
mine once said "I'd be all for a Canadian style system in the US
as long as the Canadian government ran it."
					Ellen






















>
>