August 10, 2011 at 8:55 am
Austin FraktBy tweet, I was asked where to find estimates of the cost of a single payer health system. I turned to Aaron and Don who sent the following links. I’ve read none of this and, therefore, do not offer them with any endorsement. I think what the original questioner wanted to know was how much would single payer cost over a 10 year budget window today. These links may or may not address that.
- CBO’s analysis of the American Health Security Act of 1993
- A CBO document on all payer and single payer systems, 1993
- PNHP’s page on single payer costs
- In December 2008, CBO ran estimates of 100 health policy options, and one of them wasn’t single payer
- Dylan Matthews did a “research desk” on this last month.
If you are aware of anything else relevant, please share in the comments.
UPDATES: Adding to the list.
by Jonathan H on August 10th, 2011 at 12:38
There is another question that should be asked: what would be the administrative costs of a highly regulated private, or public-private, universal insurance system?
I’ve seen international comparisons showing that the Netherlands and Switzerland, for example, have insurance administration costs of about 5% of premium. This is very similar to single payer nations. I thought the Commonwealth Fund did a report on this in the last two years, but couldn’t find the right one.