A reality check on health-care costs

Journalists tend to be a bit credulous when it comes to large numbers.  Thus we are told repeatedly that the House or Senate health-care bills will cost (fill in an astronomical number here), as if such a statement actually conveyed information.  I saw a graphic on TV news recently that said the cost would be $32,849 per family--I don't remember the actual number, which is beside the point; it's the implied 1 part in 30,000 accuracy that you should be scratching your head at. 




An estimate with no uncertainty assigned to it conveys no information.  0 is an estimate of Pi.  A poor one, but still an estimate.  Secondly, we don't have any real idea what the CBO (or whoever came up with the 871 bogo-dollar number) is trying to convey or what parts of the pervasive and normally hidden health-care costs are included in the calculation. 

So here is the reality check:  given that the US spends far more (per capita or as a percentage of GDP) on health-care than any other country, and achieves a system that is, on average, one of the poorer ones in the industrialized word, is it not obvious a priori that we could improve our system AND reduce costs?   How about adopting the system used by any of the 36 countries ahead of us on the WHO listing for starters  You don't need the CBO to tell you this.    I'm not saying it would be easy, just technically possible.   It's as if someone told you that an obese family of 4 spending $100,000 a year on food would need to spend an extra $100,000 per year to get healthier food.  Does it even make sense?

In fact, what I really want to know is:

1. How much will total health care costs change as a result of a new bill?  Will they go up or down and roughly by how much?  This requires you to use the same measure for the before and after calculation.
   
2.  How much better or worse will the new system be compared to the old system, using  some reasonably objective metrics.  I'm not picky about which ones.  Just be up-front about it.
3. And finally, what are conservative uncertainty estimates for these two numbers?

If we can't do this, then we should stop pretending to be quantitative about the whole thing and admit we're just flying by the seat of the pants.   This is better than just fooling yourself.