You're drifting far, far away from the issue that was raised at the beginning of this thread. tjic asserted, I believe as an article of ideological faith, not based on any facts or evidence, that the proposed medical insurance bills in Congress would raise overall employment costs in the U.S. That assertion is what I took issue with, because I hate to see people blindly voting up stuff they agree with without thinking about it. Nothing else.
In any case, I don't think your "closest relevant question" is well-formed. For one thing, no one is proposing "govt [sic] healthcare". For another, though what you write is frustratingly vague, it looks like you're proposing to compare outcomes between those 65 and over who are covered by Medicare with those who are young and healthy and covered through their employers -- obviously the populations are going to have very different outcomes.
> the proposed medical insurance bills in Congress would raise overall employment costs in the U.S. That assertion is what I took issue with
Your response was to claim that the govt could write checks cheaply. It's fair to point out that that response isn't relevant to the question.
> For one thing, no one is proposing "govt [sic] healthcare".
Sure they are - that's what the "govt option" is.
We have experience with lots of experience with "govt healthcare" in the US outside of Medicare and the VA. We have the Indian Health Service. We have the various state programs. and so on.
Besides, proponents of ObamaCare can't honestly ignore Medicare. They're fond of saying "we can save 30%". Since the elderly get 70% of today's spending, getting close to 30% savings means that Obamacare must reduce the cost of Medicare or it has to cut all other healthcare spending to near 0.
I'm actually all for letting Obama experiment on folks who get healthcare from govt funding (both actual govt programs and govt employees who get private healthcare). If you include federal, state, and local, that's about as many people as are currently in the private system
I think that he should have free rein to do whatever he thinks will work with those folks and the amount of money that we're spending on them today. However, in 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2014, the per-person budget should be cut by 5%. Since that's less than 20% and he's promising 30%, that's a slam dunk, and he can even use the savings to bring more people into the program.
If he's right, folks on this govt plan will be healthier and so on and the savings will be too big to ignore. If he's wrong, govt employees and the like will revolt.
In any case, I don't think your "closest relevant question" is well-formed. For one thing, no one is proposing "govt [sic] healthcare". For another, though what you write is frustratingly vague, it looks like you're proposing to compare outcomes between those 65 and over who are covered by Medicare with those who are young and healthy and covered through their employers -- obviously the populations are going to have very different outcomes.