Like many Americans, I find the issue of Health Care (as an oxymoron, ironically enough), a leading issue. Unlike many Americans I don't see the correlation between a Single Payer system reform and Communism. Let me give a few reasons why moving to a Single Payer system offers many advantages over what we presently have.
From a purely macroeconomic view moving to a Single Payer system of health care in America gives advantages to our businesses, whether a Mom and Pop shop or a major multinational corporation. If you ask a small or medium-sized business owner what makes his service or product uncompetitive in the marketplace, he is likely to point out the crushing burden of having to pay health coverage to his employees. We certainly don't have to look so far down the ladder for that insight, however. General Motors has priced itself out of competitiveness and likely in the future out of business entirely due to weight of it's health care costs to its employees, especially those hourly workers that grace it's floors as members of the AFL-CIO. GM's competitors don't have to pay any of these costs because they belong to economies that have universal health care, and when they move plants into America, they are under no dictates to allow the organization of unions that could demand that of them.
So, from a purely economic, eye on business perspective, removing health care costs from the responsibility of employers makes us more competitive, both here domestically and across foreign markets, when the consequent cost of goods sold will be less and we can better compete.
Economies in large industrialized nations depend on a strong middle class for their economic health. It is a large middle class that has the monetary strength to power an economy. It is they that purchase the large number of new cars, new houses, refrigerators, etc., that allows an capitalistic economy to remain vibrant. When you restrain that class from doing so, you endanger the health and reliability of your source of income.
With that in mind, why a government cannot ensure it's own income is it's own fault. If I work for 30 years in a factory or in twenty different jobs, that's a long time where I'm paying taxes to the government to spend as it chooses, blindly and without restrictions. If I get sick with cancer, perhaps even a second time, and cannot afford to pay (even after co-pays and deductibles and all manner of repayments), what am I to do? Die? How are taxes being paid then? What if my claims are denied by the insurance company? What was the point of paying them out of each pay check? Is insurance a philanthropic organization? No, of course not. It exists to make money and maximize profit. It does this best by minimizing and denying claims. How does this help the person going to the doctor and how does this help the government, which will now collect less taxes as a result of ill-health and/or death? If I spend thirty or fifty years working and paying taxes, is it not in the best interests of the government to help safeguard it's investment and increase the likelihood that that income keeps coming in? If I stay healthy, I'm going to keep paying taxes. If I don't, I won't. It's that simple. And, at the point I don't, the money flows the other way. If I can't work, I'm collecting money from the government instead of providing it. There's a net loss.
We are the only industrialized nation in the world without universal health care coverage. The overall quality of our health care (despite what more conservative and less-informed elements of society would tell you), is NOT the best in the world. We're ranked 37Th out of 37 nations, and we're the only one without universal health care. That should say something. We're the worlds wealthiest nation, but the quality and comprehensiveness of our health care is less than any other first world nation, and most second world ones as well.
I watched Sicko. It's a much more mature and polished and less farcical documentary by Michael Moore than his Bowling for Columbine. This film should be shown in the schools. Seriously. I lived in Canada for seventeen years and have nothing but praise for their health care system. Sure, my taxes were a little higher as a result, but if I got sick or injured, I knew I had no more than a twenty dollar co-pay to worry about. It didn't matter how long I would be in for or how many or extensive the tests needed. I knew I was covered. One of my brothers had Hodgkin's (Sp?). He was in and out of the hospital for about a year and a half. For weeks at a time he lived at the hospital, eating his meals there, sleeping overnight, getting chemotherapy three times a week and radiation therapy two or three times a week. He had all manner of scans done and several surgeries, with great deep scars made from his chest to his belly button, all very much evident all these years later. If he had lived in America, how many sessions or stays or incidents would be covered? At what point would letters start coming in the mail letting us know that he'd been dropped from coverage or that a claim had been denied? What would our lives have been like had we lived here? What did we pay for all of that there? Not a single dime. We lived there, so we paid nothing. There were no monthly insurance premiums to pay some budget-conscious insurance entity intent on maximizing profits. Health care wasn't a business, it was a means of keeping the voting public and the tax-paying public alive and healthy for the future. The American model, by comparison, is anything but compassionate. It is a self-serving entity bent on it's own aims and callous in it's regard of the very people that keep it in business. It needs to be scrapped with as much vigor as it's supporters are fanatical about it.
- 51% of U.S. adults surveyed did not visit a doctor, get a needed test, or fill a prescription within the past two years because of cost. No other country came close to that percentage.
- Although America leads the world in what it spends in healthcare, it is the only industrialized country in the world without a universal health insurance system
-60% of U.S. Firms offered Health Insurance, down 9% in 7 years, and this is course means that 40% did NOT. Also note that premiums were raised an average of 7.7% last year and 60 million Americans were without insurance. And according to the Institute of Medicine, 18,000 unnecessary deaths occur each year in the U.S. from lack of health care insurance.
Quality of Healthcare: A press release offered by the ASRN (The American Society of Registered Nurses), ranks the U.S. as sixteenth in infant mortality rates with 6.4 infant deaths per 1,000 births. The countries that come in with fewer infant mortalities include: Sweden (2.8); Japan (3.2); Finland (3.5); Norway (3.6); Czech Republic (3.9); France (4.2); Spain (4.3); Denmark (4.5); Austria (4.5); Canada (4.6); Australia (4.6); Portugal (4.9); UK (5.0); New Zealand (5.7); South Korea (6.1); U.S. (6.4).
The U.S. also ranks low in life expectancy at birth for both sexes, coming in 17th and tied with Cyprus. Other countries with higher life expectancies include: Japan (81.4); Switzerland (80.6); Sweden (80.6); Australia (80.6); Canada (80.3); Italy (79.9); France (79.9); Spain (79.8); Norway (79.7); Israel (79.6); Greece (79.4); Austria (79.2); New Zealand (79.0); Germany (79.0); U.K. (78.7); Finland (78.7); Cyprus (78.0); and the U.S. (78.0).
If you read the ASRN press release, you'll learn that the U.S. spends more per patient than any other country ($5,711 per person compared to Norway at the next highest rate of $3,809 per person). This rate of spending indicates mismanagement of funds budgeted for the healthcare system, according to the ASRN. According to the Congressional Budget Office [PDF], the federal government will give the drug and health care industries an estimated $822 billion over the next decade as a result of the 2003 enactment of Medicare Part D (although The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services says people save about $1,200 a year on average by participating in this program).
By 2016, health care spending in the United States is projected to reach just over $4.1 trillion [PDF] and comprise 19.6 percent of GDP.
Finally, the U.S. isn't listed in the top thirty countries in the world that have the highest number of physicians per 100,000 people. The country with the most physicians per 100,000 people is Cuba (1 in 136 people are doctors in Cuba). Belgium, Italy, Greece, and even Kazakhstan - among at least twenty-five other countries - come before the U.S. for the highest number of physicians per 100,000 people.
From a purely macroeconomic view moving to a Single Payer system of health care in America gives advantages to our businesses, whether a Mom and Pop shop or a major multinational corporation. If you ask a small or medium-sized business owner what makes his service or product uncompetitive in the marketplace, he is likely to point out the crushing burden of having to pay health coverage to his employees. We certainly don't have to look so far down the ladder for that insight, however. General Motors has priced itself out of competitiveness and likely in the future out of business entirely due to weight of it's health care costs to its employees, especially those hourly workers that grace it's floors as members of the AFL-CIO. GM's competitors don't have to pay any of these costs because they belong to economies that have universal health care, and when they move plants into America, they are under no dictates to allow the organization of unions that could demand that of them.
So, from a purely economic, eye on business perspective, removing health care costs from the responsibility of employers makes us more competitive, both here domestically and across foreign markets, when the consequent cost of goods sold will be less and we can better compete.
Economies in large industrialized nations depend on a strong middle class for their economic health. It is a large middle class that has the monetary strength to power an economy. It is they that purchase the large number of new cars, new houses, refrigerators, etc., that allows an capitalistic economy to remain vibrant. When you restrain that class from doing so, you endanger the health and reliability of your source of income.
With that in mind, why a government cannot ensure it's own income is it's own fault. If I work for 30 years in a factory or in twenty different jobs, that's a long time where I'm paying taxes to the government to spend as it chooses, blindly and without restrictions. If I get sick with cancer, perhaps even a second time, and cannot afford to pay (even after co-pays and deductibles and all manner of repayments), what am I to do? Die? How are taxes being paid then? What if my claims are denied by the insurance company? What was the point of paying them out of each pay check? Is insurance a philanthropic organization? No, of course not. It exists to make money and maximize profit. It does this best by minimizing and denying claims. How does this help the person going to the doctor and how does this help the government, which will now collect less taxes as a result of ill-health and/or death? If I spend thirty or fifty years working and paying taxes, is it not in the best interests of the government to help safeguard it's investment and increase the likelihood that that income keeps coming in? If I stay healthy, I'm going to keep paying taxes. If I don't, I won't. It's that simple. And, at the point I don't, the money flows the other way. If I can't work, I'm collecting money from the government instead of providing it. There's a net loss.
We are the only industrialized nation in the world without universal health care coverage. The overall quality of our health care (despite what more conservative and less-informed elements of society would tell you), is NOT the best in the world. We're ranked 37Th out of 37 nations, and we're the only one without universal health care. That should say something. We're the worlds wealthiest nation, but the quality and comprehensiveness of our health care is less than any other first world nation, and most second world ones as well.
I watched Sicko. It's a much more mature and polished and less farcical documentary by Michael Moore than his Bowling for Columbine. This film should be shown in the schools. Seriously. I lived in Canada for seventeen years and have nothing but praise for their health care system. Sure, my taxes were a little higher as a result, but if I got sick or injured, I knew I had no more than a twenty dollar co-pay to worry about. It didn't matter how long I would be in for or how many or extensive the tests needed. I knew I was covered. One of my brothers had Hodgkin's (Sp?). He was in and out of the hospital for about a year and a half. For weeks at a time he lived at the hospital, eating his meals there, sleeping overnight, getting chemotherapy three times a week and radiation therapy two or three times a week. He had all manner of scans done and several surgeries, with great deep scars made from his chest to his belly button, all very much evident all these years later. If he had lived in America, how many sessions or stays or incidents would be covered? At what point would letters start coming in the mail letting us know that he'd been dropped from coverage or that a claim had been denied? What would our lives have been like had we lived here? What did we pay for all of that there? Not a single dime. We lived there, so we paid nothing. There were no monthly insurance premiums to pay some budget-conscious insurance entity intent on maximizing profits. Health care wasn't a business, it was a means of keeping the voting public and the tax-paying public alive and healthy for the future. The American model, by comparison, is anything but compassionate. It is a self-serving entity bent on it's own aims and callous in it's regard of the very people that keep it in business. It needs to be scrapped with as much vigor as it's supporters are fanatical about it.
- 51% of U.S. adults surveyed did not visit a doctor, get a needed test, or fill a prescription within the past two years because of cost. No other country came close to that percentage.
- Although America leads the world in what it spends in healthcare, it is the only industrialized country in the world without a universal health insurance system
-60% of U.S. Firms offered Health Insurance, down 9% in 7 years, and this is course means that 40% did NOT. Also note that premiums were raised an average of 7.7% last year and 60 million Americans were without insurance. And according to the Institute of Medicine, 18,000 unnecessary deaths occur each year in the U.S. from lack of health care insurance.
Quality of Healthcare: A press release offered by the ASRN (The American Society of Registered Nurses), ranks the U.S. as sixteenth in infant mortality rates with 6.4 infant deaths per 1,000 births. The countries that come in with fewer infant mortalities include: Sweden (2.8); Japan (3.2); Finland (3.5); Norway (3.6); Czech Republic (3.9); France (4.2); Spain (4.3); Denmark (4.5); Austria (4.5); Canada (4.6); Australia (4.6); Portugal (4.9); UK (5.0); New Zealand (5.7); South Korea (6.1); U.S. (6.4).
The U.S. also ranks low in life expectancy at birth for both sexes, coming in 17th and tied with Cyprus. Other countries with higher life expectancies include: Japan (81.4); Switzerland (80.6); Sweden (80.6); Australia (80.6); Canada (80.3); Italy (79.9); France (79.9); Spain (79.8); Norway (79.7); Israel (79.6); Greece (79.4); Austria (79.2); New Zealand (79.0); Germany (79.0); U.K. (78.7); Finland (78.7); Cyprus (78.0); and the U.S. (78.0).
If you read the ASRN press release, you'll learn that the U.S. spends more per patient than any other country ($5,711 per person compared to Norway at the next highest rate of $3,809 per person). This rate of spending indicates mismanagement of funds budgeted for the healthcare system, according to the ASRN. According to the Congressional Budget Office [PDF], the federal government will give the drug and health care industries an estimated $822 billion over the next decade as a result of the 2003 enactment of Medicare Part D (although The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services says people save about $1,200 a year on average by participating in this program).
By 2016, health care spending in the United States is projected to reach just over $4.1 trillion [PDF] and comprise 19.6 percent of GDP.
Finally, the U.S. isn't listed in the top thirty countries in the world that have the highest number of physicians per 100,000 people. The country with the most physicians per 100,000 people is Cuba (1 in 136 people are doctors in Cuba). Belgium, Italy, Greece, and even Kazakhstan - among at least twenty-five other countries - come before the U.S. for the highest number of physicians per 100,000 people.
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