http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/01/13/what-liberals-get-wrong-about-single-payer/
"Insurers are the bogeymen of American health care. That’s in part because they do a lot of the unpopular stuff: They’re the ones who charge you money for health care, who say you can’t get something you want, who your bosses blame when they deduct more money from your paycheck to cover health costs. And it’s hard to see what value they add to the system.
Yet the problem with the Affordable Care Act isn’t the insurance industry. In fact, the main benefits of nationalized health care can be achieved in systems with hundreds, even thousands, of for-profit insurers.
"By 2017," Moore writes, "we will be funneling over $100 billion annually to private insurance companies." The insurers will use the bulk of that money, however, to pay hospitals and pharmaceutical companies and device manufacturers for medical care.
A clearer way to think about this is profits -- and insurers aren’t where the big profits in the health-care system go. In 2009, Forbes
ranked health insurance as the 35th most profitable industry, with an anemic 2.2 percent return on revenue. To understand why the U.S. health-care system is so expensive, you need to travel higher up the Forbes list. The pharmaceutical industry was in third place, with a 19.9 percent return, and the medical products and equipment industry was right behind it, with a 16.3 percent return. Meanwhile, doctors are more likely than members of any other profession to have incomes in the top 1 percent."
So is this guy an insurance company shill claiming that the drug and medical device companies, along with doctors, are the true healthcare cost culprits?
"Why? Because in every case the government sets prices for health-care services and products. Insurers in Switzerland don’t negotiate drug prizes with Pfizer. The Swiss government simply sets its drug prices and lets Pfizer decide whether to sell in Switzerland -- or not."
So if Pfizer says screw your paltry payment then you just go without....
“Single payer isn’t a panacea,” said Uwe Reinhardt, a health economist at Princeton University. “The magic they have is setting rates. But neither Medicare nor Canada has done anything innovative on the delivery side. Taiwan is trying a little bit but not a whole lot. By and large they just pay bills.” The limitations of single-payer systems became clear during the health-care debate, when the Congressional Budget Office projected that premiums for a public option would be higher than premiums for private insurance -- unless a public option could avail itself of Medicare’s pricing power."
So let the gov't tell companies how much they can charge for goods and services. Heck, make em work for free! Crisis adverted!