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If you look at private health care providers, you have costs associated with just advertising and public lobbying of politicians, and we have to look at the fact that these corporations exist to make a profit, first and foremost. Your health care is secondary to that goal, and we see cases proving that every year when they exploit loopholes in the contract to dump patients who have become "too expensive." Who pays for their profit margins, their advertising, and their lobbying campaigns? You, the lonely worker.
In a system run by the state, you can subtract the cost of advertising, and remove the profit margins, and the cost of public lobbying from the equation. All you have to worry about are the costs associated with providing care to people, and research and development into new medicine, new medical technology, and treatment techniques. However, the trade-off is that you now have to worry about bureaucratic waste.
In the absence of competition, there can be less pressure to remain as efficient as possible with respect to bureaucratic overhead costs, but if state-run health care could be run as efficiently as Social Security can, then the risks do not outweigh the benefits, especially if the system is set up to be largely independent of the whims of politicians and their system of awarding the spoils among the winners. This is why Brown got appointed to run FEMA, and THAT is what we DO NOT want with a state-run health care system.
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