From: gld@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu (Gary L Dare)
Newsgroups: misc.invest
Subject: Re: Economic effects of election results
Date: 1 Sep 92 03:01:10 GMT
Reply-To: gld@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu (Gary L Dare)
Organization: Curious Goods (formerly Louis Vendredi Antiques)

mzwick@vitro.com (Morris J. Zwick) writes:
>
>I would think that any nationalized health care would cause them (and
>private insurers) to plummet. The nationalization of medicine will, in
>the short term, reduce or inhibit prices by government fiat (price
>controls). In the long term, this will mean less private investment 
>in medical technology, therefore reducing the gains made by medical
>science (medical R&D is EXPENSIVE).

It depends how it's done, as opposed to any Sovietic scare-scenarioes
that are popular around these parts.  In Canada, France and Germany,
in the richer half of the G7 along with the U.S., our biggest question
was how to reconcile the non-market and the market aspects of health
coverage so we started and ended with just basic health insurance (all
despite of what you might hear in the media down here; there are still
people who think that Toronto is comprised of igloos with singing
Mounties and mad French-Canadian fur trappers).  There are still
frills according to class, if you can buy private supplementary
coverage for private rooms, etc.  All private doctors and private or
public hospitals are the norm ... despite that there is a single
insurance fee schedule (agreed to by the CMA's provincial doctors
guilds and rubber-stamped by the government), everything else is free
market and that includes drugs (paid for out-of-pocket or by private
insurance).

The problem that international pharmaceuticals had with Canada was the
short patent periods, not the prices they were asking ... with longer
patent rights, the research came back.

My own prediction is that the U.S. will go to a system where basic
coverage is covered by a public pool, but brokered by private firms
who will offer what we call "private supplementary" up north on top of
it all (basically, filling out what their current policies are).  The
same class differentiations in the U.S. and Canada will remain due to
the presence of "private supplementary" and those who can pay for it.

Note that Canadian health insurance is divided by provinces so that
we have 10 companies; the United States would have at least 100 (2
per state, minimum) due to population differentials ... subdivision
into smaller, manageable sized groups and greater corruption are two
reasons why I think that private insurers will not go away but will
play a part of any future American single-payer universal coverage.
Canadian private insurance deals only in domestic non-medical (for
private rooms, telephone, etc.) and travel full-medical (mainly for
emergencies in the U.S.), abandoning basic to the government and
making tons of money at it ...  CIBC offers private supplementary
coverage with its Premier (platinum) Visa card for travellers.

Investment advice: buy private medical insurers during the initial
panic and confusion, wait for basic medical to move to universal
coverage, then see the private companies take off after the weight is
removed from around their necks.  My family did quite well back in
Canada using that strategy when we changed our health insurance over
20 years ago (before that, Canada and the U.S. was the same ... paid
cash).

gld
--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Je me souviens ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Gary L. Dare				Elections 1992-93:
> gld@cunixB.cc.columbia.EDU		* Jean Chretien (Canada)
> gld@cunixc.BITNET			* Perot^H^H^H^H^H Elvis! (USA)
Newsgroups: misc.invest