State Employers would Save $1.8 Billion a year and lower Premiums 33%. Damn Socialism.

Isn’t it strange how Republicans resist saving thousands of dollars a year in health care. Even though we now know it’s not true, they claim they’re fiscal conservatives, pushing relentlessly for lower taxes and cutting wasteful spending…except when it comes to health care. It okay for them to allow the private sector to rip them off year after year while denouncing a more cost effective way to deliver health care. Take for instance this small section of a Capital Times editorial on a new study:

A study released last week by Citizen Action of Wisconsin confirmed what we've been saying for decades -- Wisconsin businesses and individuals could save bundles of money if the nation's health care system is properly reformed.

Citizen Action's study said that President Barack Obama's plan, which includes a public health insurance option, would save state employers $1.8 billion a year and could lower health insurance premiums by up to 33 percent.

So how could you argue with that kind of savings? From the comments section below the article, their were many dissenters:

No facts, no details, just the conclusion of a left leaning political group that health care "reform" will save money … Citizen Action is just another in a long line of Democrat front groups that pays to generate a "report" that works as talking points for candidates - not actually doing any research. Not sure if the bigger joke is Citizen Action or the Cap Times for this silly article … Does the study take into account how public financed health care disincentives entrance into the medical profession? Does the study take into account the limits this will put on the development of new therapies?

In another case of projection, conservative think that everyone, even liberal researchers, make things up like they do. It’s so much a part of their tactical “debate” that truth is now an opinion or a liberal lie, made to make them look foolish.

U.S. Rep. Steve Kagen, D-Green Bay, said, "This report shows that we can have much better coverage for a lower price," Kagen said. But the Citizen Action report demonstrates that even a plan that retains private insurance with a public option can lower health care costs. It further debunked the notion that private plans without a public option -- a position that the insurance lobby is pushing -- would save money as well. The study revealed the savings would be minimal at best andwould simply protect the current system, which has failed so many Americans for decades.

And that’s the plan pushed by Sen. Max Bauchus and Sen. Chuck Grassley. Let’s hope the House’s role as policy maker supersedes the Senates funding and flawed structural vision.
Here’s another comment worth considering:

As far as single payer health care goes a couple of points:

1) If a system is set up for profit than it automatically has a cost not related to keeping people healthy. When people complain about a government bureaucrat judging healthcare, it makes me wonder if they would rather have a corporate insurance bureaucrat (that strictly motivated by profit) making those decisions.

2) While a single payer health care can be affordable, it doesn't have to be free. Minimum co-pays can be used to help prevent fraud and abuse as well as keeping people from over-using the system.

3) We already have a "free" system it's called the emergency room. Except it isn't free to those that have to use it and have health insurance. The ER charges people for the visit as well as the people that came in for free. This means that anyone (including me) that uses health care gets to pay for other people now with larger and larger health premiums.

4) International study after study has shown that we curerently have one of the most overprised, under-used healthcare systems. Every statistic has shown that we have less healthy outcomes for it as well.

IT NEEDS TO CHANGE.