In healthcare, one man's waste is another's profit stream

The ever-popular young collectivist (and future Spokesperson for the Jews) Ezra Klein writeth:

There was a great line at this morning's Business and Health Care forum, attributed to Newt Gingrich, which went something like, "one man's $200 billion in waste is another man's $200 billion profit stream." That's about the most essential fact in health care politics there is.

This reminded me of a headline this morning in the daily e-mail I get from the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad. Last week I gushed about a story in the W$J that gushed about the revamped Dutch health care system, which guarantees universal coverage but aims to cut costs with lots of competition. Today's NRC headline read (translation mine): "Hospitals make a quarter less profit." That's in 2006, the year the new system took effect, compared with the year before. The overall profit margin for the sector was 0.6%. Here's why:

The hospitals had to pay more for medical supplies, got less money from the government and invested more in renovations and better meals to attract patients.

The remarkable thing is that Dutch politicians seem be able to get laws passed that disadvantage big, profitable interest groups in an attempt to serve the broader public interest. Doesn't seem to happen so much here.

While I'm tangentially on the subject of Ezra Klein--whom I've recently discovered is a Banana Slug--I feel the self-aggrandizing need to mention that in an online American Prospect column last week he wrote this:

Even the center-right economics commentator Justin Fox admitted, "When writing about tax policy in particular, the Journal editorialists seem entirely unaware of most economic theory and empirical evidence on the issue."

I think this may just be a poor-man's version of that ever-popular line among conservatives since the early 1980s: "Even the liberal New Republic ..." Whatever, I'll take it. Although as Newt Gingrich would surely say, one man's center-rightist is another's center-leftist.