Over the past couple of days, we have heard Warren Buffett, one of the world’s wealthiest persons, and Larry Summers, former Secretary of the Treasury and more recently director of the President’s National Economic Council, lavish optimism concerning the future of the American economy.
Having recently been advised that premiums for employee health care benefits will rise 15% this year as compared to a 2.2% increase in the Consumer Price Index, we know better.
(The increase in the company’s share of the premiums absorbs what could be wage increases to reflect the rate of inflation and merit for most line employee! The hospital deductible actually doubled…making it beyond the reach of many of our employees. Worse yet, many employees who need coverage opt out because they can no longer afford their moderate share of the cost.)
There is no way that a nation can spend 18% of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on health care and at least 2% of GDP in excessive defense expenditures, which already total that of all the other advanced nations of the world combined, and yet prosper.
As we have often reported, France’s health care is generally acknowledged to be the best in the world and its costs them 11% of their GNP, and this is higher than the percentage of GNP of all of the other advanced nations apart from the USA. To make things worse, our health care is rated around thirteenth in the world, next to Cuba’s!
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“Obama Care”) was important because it provided coverage for tens of millions. But it was but the first step and, in other ways, a step in the wrong direction.
The public does not understand that 52% of our health care is already through Medicare, the Veterans Administration, and other governmental programs…all ‘single payer’ and by the government, with miniscule administrative costs (about 2% vs. close to 20% for private health care programs.) Next time you visit your doctor, count the number of office staff vs. medical personnel!
There is only one proper direction, the direction followed by all of the other advanced nations, and that amounts to one of many variations on “Medicare for everyone.” Only that will slash the extraordinary unnecessary processing and redundancy part of our current system which grew out of an attempt by employers, prohibited from raising wages during World War II, to lure workers by offering health care benefits.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned us against the ascendancy of the “military / industrial complex.” They have been swindling us ever since with their war mongering.
Excessive health care and military costs are the same as an extra 10% tax on the economy. That is the money need for investment in business and society
Until the USA truly reforms health care and shrinks its bloated military by at least a third, we will continue to pile up deficits and fall further behind in education and infrastructure. This will be detrimental not only to our economic well being, but to our standing in the world.
POST SCRIPT: We could also save an addition one percent by doing away with the most egregious aspects of the “War on Drugs”.
Although I don’t disagree that we should be focused on affordable health care and cost containment, I don’t know that 18 % of GDP for healthcare is inappropriate. What could be a greater priority for spending than our health?
We need to remember that our economy has changed so dramatically in the last two generations. We no longer need 80 % of our population to grow food or spend an hour each day chopping wood to keep the house warm. We live in an economy where many people spend as much on cell phones, cable TV, and internet each month as they spend on food. Even in 2016 the Obamacare tax for not having health insurance will be less than the average cell phone, cable TV, or internet bill.