Re: US Healthcare further destroyed by right wing extremism
From: fresh~horses (fresh~horses_at_despammed.com)
Date: 08/28/04
- Next message: John Que: "Re: sardine and anchovy PUFA content"
- Previous message: Robert: "Re: Should we really be lowering cholesterol"
- In reply to: GMCarter: "Re: US Healthcare further destroyed by right wing extremism"
- Next in thread: Robert: "Re: US Healthcare further destroyed by right wing extremism"
- Reply: Robert: "Re: US Healthcare further destroyed by right wing extremism"
- Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ]
Date: 28 Aug 2004 01:56:08 -0700
GMCarter <fiar@verizon.net> wrote in message news:<864ui0h87l19pn5hj9fb2nlasjn2mdae8i@4ax.com>...
Hadn't heard of this writer George. Now have him bookmarked next to
Palast. Thanks. Zee
> OP-ED COLUMNIST
> America's Failing Health
> By PAUL KRUGMAN
>
> Published: August 27, 2004
>
> Working Americans have two great concerns: the growing difficulty of
> getting health insurance, and the continuing difficulty they have in
> finding jobs. These concerns may have a common cause: soaring
> insurance premiums.
>
> In most advanced countries, the government provides everyone with
> health insurance. In America, however, the government offers insurance
> only if you're elderly (Medicare) or poor (Medicaid). Otherwise,
> you're expected to get private health insurance, usually through your
> job. But insurance premiums are exploding, and the system of
> employment-linked insurance is falling apart.
>
> Some employers have dropped their health plans. Others have maintained
> benefits for current workers, but are finding ways to avoid paying
> benefits to new hires - for example, by using temporary workers. And
> some businesses, while continuing to provide health benefits, are
> refusing to hire more workers.
>
> In other words, rising health care costs aren't just causing a rapid
> rise in the ranks of the uninsured (confirmed by yesterday's Census
> Bureau report); they're also, because of their link to employment, a
> major reason why this economic recovery has generated fewer jobs than
> any previous economic expansion.
>
> Clearly, health care reform is an urgent social and economic issue.
> But who has the right answer?
>
> The 2004 Economic Report of the President told us what George Bush's
> economists think, though we're unlikely to hear anything as blunt at
> next week's convention. According to the report, health costs are too
> high because people have too much insurance and purchase too much
> medical care. What we need, then, are policies, like tax-advantaged
> health savings accounts tied to plans with high deductibles, that
> induce people to pay more of their medical expenses out of pocket.
> (Cynics would say that this is just a rationale for yet another tax
> shelter for the wealthy, but the economists who wrote the report are
> probably sincere.)
>
> John Kerry's economic advisers have a very different analysis: they
> believe that health costs are too high because private insurance
> companies have excessive overhead, mainly because they are trying to
> avoid covering high-risk patients. What we need, according to this
> view, is for the government to assume more of the risk, for example by
> picking up catastrophic health costs, thereby reducing the incentive
> for socially wasteful spending, and making employment-based insurance
> easier to get.
>
> A smart economist can come up with theoretical justifications for
> either argument. The evidence suggests, however, that the Kerry
> position is much closer to the truth.
>
> The fact is that the mainly private U.S. health care system spends far
> more than the mainly public health care systems of other advanced
> countries, but gets worse results. In 2001, we spent $4,887 on health
> care per capita, compared with $2,792 in Canada and $2,561 in France.
> Yet the U.S. does worse than either country by any measure of health
> care success you care to name - life expectancy, infant mortality,
> whatever. (At its best, U.S. health care is the best in the world. But
> the ranks of Americans who can't afford the best, and may have no
> insurance at all, are large and growing.)
>
> And the U.S. system does have very high overhead: private insurers and
> H.M.O.'s spend much more on administrative expenses, as opposed to
> actual medical treatment, than public agencies at home or abroad.
>
> Does this mean that the American way is wrong, and that we should
> switch to a Canadian-style single-payer system? Well, yes. Put it this
> way: in Canada, respectable business executives are ardent defenders
> of "socialized medicine." Two years ago the Conference Board of Canada
> - a who's who of the nation's corporate elite - issued a report urging
> fellow Canadians to bear in mind not just the "symbolic value" of
> universal health care, but its "economic contribution to the
> competitiveness of Canadian businesses."
>
> My health-economist friends say that it's unrealistic to call for a
> single-payer system here: the interest groups are too powerful, and
> the antigovernment propaganda of the right has become too well
> established in public opinion. All that we can hope for right now is a
> modest step in the right direction, like the one Mr. Kerry is
> proposing. I bow to their political wisdom. But let's not ignore the
> growing evidence that our dysfunctional medical system is bad not just
> for our health, but for our economy.
- Next message: John Que: "Re: sardine and anchovy PUFA content"
- Previous message: Robert: "Re: Should we really be lowering cholesterol"
- In reply to: GMCarter: "Re: US Healthcare further destroyed by right wing extremism"
- Next in thread: Robert: "Re: US Healthcare further destroyed by right wing extremism"
- Reply: Robert: "Re: US Healthcare further destroyed by right wing extremism"
- Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ]
Relevant Pages
|
