Study: Integrate private, gov't healthcare

BOSTON, Feb. 1 (UPI) -- The U.S. healthcare system is inefficient and expensive but could be improved with an integrated system, Israeli and U.S. researchers say.

Dov Chernichovsky, of the National Bureau of Economic Research in Boston and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel, and Arleen A. Leibowitz of the University of California, Los Angeles, say an integrated healthcare system with a National Healthcare Trust would require households to pay taxes to federal or state governments to support health services. Households would also make direct, mandatory payments to support healthcare similar to payroll taxes that support the Social Security System or the payment that Medicare requires

Such as system would provide funding for both personal medical care and public health prevention measures. Such a system would reduce billing costs and administrative waste by eliminating medical underwriting, duplicate coverage and cost shifting.

Instead of employers offering core insurance benefits, all residents would select a health plan or physician through a regional insurance exchange.

The findings, published in American Journal of Public Health, say the new system would be similar to those in Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands, countries that the researchers said achieve superior health outcomes but spend a smaller proportion of gross domestic product on healthcare -- between 9.2 and 11.6 percent while the Unites States pay 17 percent, the researchers say.