Wednesday, December 05, 2007

Kindergarten Economics

Here's how the Statists "justify" Healthy Wisconsin.

The study released Tuesday, prepared by Robert Kraig, program director at Citizen Action, reports on the costs of health care in different regions of the state for people in the state-employee health-care plan.

Wadle said the survey shows the advantage of bargaining power to keep down costs. For example, he said, costs were lowest in Madison, where 94,000 of 195,000 state employees are located.


"Because you have bargaining power, you are able to restrain costs," he said.


According to the study, the Eau Claire/Chippewa Falls region is the most expensive for state employees. The Green Bay/Manitowoc/ Sheboygan region ranked seventh most expensive out of 15.

The Appleton-Oshkosh area ranks ninth most expensive. Fond du Lac ranked 10th.
Citizen Action, according to its Web site, seeks to replace insurance companies with a system of public financing that uses standardized coverage and claims procedures.


Uh huh.

Just exactly how do State insurance prices compare to private-sector insurance prices in those markets? More pointed: does Roundy's (or Manpower, or JCI) get a better price than the State in the Milwaukee metro market?

1 comment:

Jack Lohman said...

I'm sure the facts may not sit well with those who oppose single-payer healthcare, but Medicare has both a traditional side of it (WPS with 81% of the Medicare patients) and a bunch of private contractors (Medicare Advantage with 19% of the patients). The costs to the taxpayer are roughly 20% higher for Medicare Advantage patients.

So much for private being more efficient than public.