SLOUCHING TOWARD HEALTHCARE REFORM

I've noted previously that some "non-liberal" players are beginning to call for comprehensive healthcare reform and Paul Krugman's latest column has more on what's wrong:

McKinsey & Company, the consulting firm, recently released an important report dissecting the reasons America spends so much more on health care than other wealthy nations. One major factor is that we spend $98 billion a year in excess administrative costs, with more than half of the total accounted for by marketing and underwriting — costs that don’t exist in single-payer systems.And this is just part of the story. McKinsey’s estimate of excess administrative costs counts only the costs of insurers. It doesn’t, as the report concedes, include other “important consequences of the multipayor system,” like the extra costs imposed on providers.

[SNIP]

McKinsey estimates that the United States pays $66 billion a year in excess drug costs, and overpays for medical devices like knee and hip implants, too.

An earlier article from the NY Times provides some more information about how expensive healthcare is becoming and what major U.S. companies are thinking:

“There is more frustration and less acceptance of the current system among employers than we have ever seen in my 30 years in this field,” said Helen Darling, president of the National Business Group on Health, an organization made up of large companies.

... the head of another representative of large corporations said that not taking action was no longer an option for American companies as they compete with foreign businesses whose governments shouldered medical and hospital costs.

“Health costs are the single largest cost pressure that employers face — far exceeding energy, labor, material, even litigation,” said John J. Castellani, president of the Business Roundtable, an association of 165 of the largest companies.

The national grocery chain Safeway, for example, says the $1 billion it spent on employee health care last year exceeded its net income. By next year, that will be true for most large businesses, according to Safeway’s chairman and chief executive, Steven A. Burd, who cited a McKinsey & Company study.