The debt is increasing with no indication that the economy is growing to service it.
- Real economy indicators show signs of stabilization. See in particular the charts on manufacturing sentiment, nonfarm payrolls, oil prices, and car sales. Nonetheless, many of these indicators remain worse than anything hitherto experienced in the postwar period.
- The collapse in the federal government’s finances is unprecedented, raising questions about how the government deficit will be brought under control.
The solution, of course, is universal health care.
Regarding health care costs, I'd just like to point out this item. In particular, look at the graph of health care expenditures per capita.
ReplyDeleteThe thing is, this graph shows that we are *already* spending more on "Public health care spending" (medicare/medicaid, and maybe other programs?) than other countries that *do* have universal health care converage, and *we are only covering a fraction of the population with it*. And medicare/medicaid covers what, about a quarter of the population or less?
That means we are spending *about four times as much per person covered* as, say, France is. *FRANCE*.
To me, this screams there is more than routine government mismanagement and bungling (France would have that, after all). This looks like massive, systemic fraud. Never mind "reforms", somebody needs to go to *jail* over this. Probably a *lot* of somebodys.
I'm leery of international comparisons. Instead, I'd point you to Medicare and Medicaid. If those were going to save us tons of money, they would have done so by now.
ReplyDeleteI'm also not one to blame big pharma. Having had family members as drug researchers, claiming that Big Pharma is somehow ripping us all off is total nonsense. Drug development is very expensive and very dicey.
Consolidating electronic records sounds like something my organization would claim as a big cost saver. $100M into the project, they'd realize that the cost savings weren't going to pay for it until 2050 and then we'd all have our budgets cut to demonstrate the "savings".
Defensive medicine gets close to the truth. Nurses can diagnose and treat most modern illnesses. Paying for the CAT scanner through your visit to deal with the flu is probably not a good idea. But to get those savings, you'd have to move into retail health care and take away the big lawsuits. Good luck with that.
Finally, I've never seen anyone put the rise of health care costs more clearly or succinctly than Peter Drucker.
"Instead, I'd point you to Medicare and Medicaid. If those were going to save us tons of money, they would have done so by now"
ReplyDeleteWell, that's my point. I *am* looking at Medicare/Medicaid, and I'm apalled. The value of the international comparison is that it shows us just how screwed up (and probably scam-ridden) Medicare and Medicaid are. A while back, I was arguing that we are already spending enough money for universal health care without actually getting it. But now, I realize that the first thing we need is a serious housecleaning.
A witch-hunt is an ugly thing. But I think it is about time we had one.