single payer health care is optimal health care system

I've outlined my opponents points in bold below and address them accordingly.con cites lots of figures but does nothing to put them into perspective.Please let me know which figures you would need perspective on. After reviewing, all of my numbers are not only accurate, but also in context to the debate. I am happy to make it easier to understand, if possible. con ignores when i did.... we spend eighteen percent on health care per GDP and other single payer countires spend ten percent.A common argument advanced in support of greater government intervention in the American healthcare market is that a large and growing fraction of the gross domestic product (GDP) is spent on healthcare, while the results, such as average life expectancy, do not compare favorably to the Western nations that have adopted some form of universal healthcare. This argument is spurious for two reasons: A growing fraction of GDP spent on healthcare is not a problem per se. In the early half of the 20th century, the fraction of GDP spent on healthcare grew significantly as new treatments, medical technology and drugs became available. Growth in spending of this nature is desirable if it satisfies consumer preferences. Attributing national-health results to the healthcare system adopted by different countries confuses correlation with causation and ignores the many salient variables that are causal factors affecting aggregate statistics (such as average life expectancy). Factors that are likely to be at least as important as the healthcare system include the dietary and exercise preferences of a population. insurance spends thirty percent of income on profit and administration, while medicare spends less than five on administration. All being equal, the fact that a government program would not need to turn a profit suggests that it might enjoy a price advantage over for-profit insurers. If so, that price advantage would be slight. According to the Congressional Budget Office, profits account for less than 3 percent of private health insurance premiums. Furthermore, government’s lack of a profit motive may not be an advantage at all. Profits are an important market signal that increase efficiency by encouraging producers to find lower-cost ways of meeting consumers’ needs. The lack of a profit motive could lead a government program to be less efficient than private insurance, not more. Moreover, all else is not equal. Government programs typically keep administrative expenditures low by avoiding activities like utilization or claims review. Yet avoiding those activities increases overall costs. According to the CBO, the traditional fee-for-service Medicare program does relatively little to manage benefits, which tends to reduce its administrative costs but may raise its overall spending relative to a more tightly managed approach. Similarly, the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission writes: [The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services] estimates that about $9.8 billion in erroneous payments were made in the fee-for-service program in 2007, a figure more than double what CMS spent for claims processing and review activities. In Medicare Advantage, CMS estimates that erroneous payments equaled $6.8 billion in 2006, or approximately 10.6 percent of payments. The significant size of Medicare’s erroneous payments suggests that the program’s low administrative costs may come at a price. CMS further estimates that it made $10.4 billion in improper payments in the fee-for-service Medicare program in 2008. Medicare keeps its measured administrative-cost ratio relatively low by avoiding important administrative activities (which shrinks the numerator) and tolerating vast amounts of wasteful and fraudulent claims (which inflates the denominator). Medicare also keeps its administrative expenditures down by conducting almost no quality-improvement activities. Journalist Shannon Brownlee and Obama adviser Ezekiel Emanuel wrote a while back: [S]ome administrative costs are not only necessary but beneficial. Following heart-attack or cancer patients to see which interventions work best is an administrative cost, but it’s also invaluable if you want to improve care. Tracking the rate of heart attacks from drugs such as Avandia is key to ensuring safe pharmaceuticals. According to the CBO, private insurers spend nearly 1 percent of premiums on “medical management.” The fact that Medicare keeps administrative expenditures low by avoiding such quality-improvement activities may likewise result in higher overall costs—in this case by suppressing the quality of care. Supporters who praise Medicare’s apparently low administrative costs often fail to note that some of those costs are hidden costs that are borne by other federal agencies, and thus fail to appear in the standard under 3% estimate that my debator cites. These include “parts of salaries for legislators, staff and others working on Medicare, building costs, marketing costs, collection of premiums and taxes, accounting including auditing and fraud issues, etc.” Also, Medicare’s administrative costs should be understood to include the deadweight loss from the taxes that fund the program. Economists estimate that it can easily cost society $1.30 to raise just $1 in tax revenue, and it may sometimes cost as much as $2.36 That “excess burden” of taxation is a very real cost of administering (i.e., collecting the taxes for) compulsory health insurance programs like Medicare, even though it appears in no government budgets. Economists who have tallied the full administrative burden of government health insurance programs conclude that administrative costs are far higher in government programs than in private insurance. In 1992,University of Pennsylvania economist Patricia Danzon estimated that total administrative costs were more than 45 percent of claims in Canada’s Medicare system, compared to less than 8 percent of claims for private insurance in the United States. Pacific Research Institute economist Ben Zycher writes that a “realistic assumption” about the size of the deadweight burden puts “the true cost of delivering Medicare benefits [at] about 52 percent of Medicare outlays, or between four and five times the net cost of private health insurance.” Administrative costs can appear quite low if you only count some of them. Medicare hides its higher administrative costs from enrollees and taxpayers, and public-plan supporters rely on the hidden nature of those costs when they argue in favor of a new government program. "advocates assured them that all seniors could easily be covered under Medicare with only a small increase in workers" payroll taxes."medicare is not a lot of a person's pay roll tax.It's 2.9%. Saying that isn't a lot is subjective (to say the least) and has a much more significant burden on the lowest wage earners.if people can't afford to have insurance with medicare, that is their own problem and nothing to do with medicare. they should be happy they have medicare. con says it's "existing rules" that cause some to not be able to afford it, but he doesn't say what rules or explain himself.I'm sorry, but I am unable to say what can/should make someone "happy." That's left to the individual from my viewpoint. To be fair, the exisiting rules have been altered more in favor of the customer with the advent of Part B, so my arguement here - while still valid - is less compelling with these new rules. (Not enough characters here to go into the details of Part B.)con has a point that the government could and should negotitate to get lower prices.con says people would be forced to give up their doctor relationship with singe payer. but they dont have to with medicare. they dont even have to take medicare, if they dont want, and if they want additional services, they can pay extra.But my point is that the customer shouldn't ever be forced to break their relationship with an exisiting doctor for a state-run system.