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Health Policy
Lives at Risk: Single-Payer National Health Insurance Around the World
by John C. Goodman, Gerald L. Musgrave, and Devon M. Herrick (National Center for Policy Analysis), 263 pp, with illus, $70, ISBN 0-7425-4151-7, paper, $22.95, ISBN 0-7425-4152-5, Lanham, Md, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2004.
JAMA. 2005;293:369-370.
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If you’re looking for intellectual ammunition to refute the perennial myths about the triumph of socialized medicine in the rest of the developed world, this book is essential. It is an updated, expanded, well-referenced version of Twenty Myths About National Health Insurance, published in 1991 by the National Center for Policy Analysis.
Because single-payer advocates assert that enough funding to expand coverage to all will flow painlessly from the elimination of private insurers, the administrative cost myth is a crucial one. Goodman et al demolish it decisively. Private administration really is more efficient than public. Moreover, the key to eliminating both waste and perverse incentives is to get all third parties out of the majority of medical encounters—not to make a federal case of every single episode of medical care. True insurance is a method for indemnifying subscribers for a catastrophic loss, not a bill-paying service.
Despite the inconveniences of . . . [Full Text of this Article]
Jane M. Orient, MD, Reviewer
Association of American Physicians and Surgeons
University of Arizona College of Medicine
Tucson
jorient@mindspring.com
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