The majority in the USA is already paying for the health care , such as it is, for the 47 million without health insurance and the 26 million with crummy health insurance; and for the outrageous waste in our current system. why do we pay at least 55% more per capita (adjusted for incomes) than any other industrialized nation for health care? And why are we down the list , far down the list, in many positive health statistics? There are many reasons, some of which include the high cost of emergency care to the uninsured , the paper nightmares the insurance system sends us through, the legal system -not a major issue for actual costs but which contributes to defensive medicine which is costly. Then many elderly people are treating health care visits as social visits. This is a fact and i am 70 and see it going on.
Also there are, ridiculous profits and high exec. salaries in the health insurance industry and too much emphasis on fee for service rather than outcomes. Clinics that pay salaries, even high salaries deliver health care for much less than those whose doctors are owners, medicine as a profit center seems to have been taken way beyond the good of the society as a whole.
Drugs in the USA cost, on average 73% more than the same drugs in Canada.
There are also artificial shortages in the health system that drive up costs as well as too much emphasis on the latest high tech machines . In all our current system has too many perverse incentives which boost costs and do not deliver much health improvement.
We also need , as a nation, to get off the high fat high corn sugar kick we are on, it is worse here than in any other nation.
The current legislation barely gets at some of these issues, if we do not act boldly we will further screw our competitive place in the world and drive health c are costs to over 20% of our soon to be very anemic GDP_. |
