I am not a socialist, and I wish the government were half its size. I have a bleeding heart for the poor, and wish the minimum wage was higher. The poor need to work for their money, but their pay seems too low.
As far as the health care system, I got this at the UCLA Anderson Forecast. Christopher Thornberg said that one of the big problems in our country is our inefficient and expensive health care system.
From the UCLA Anderson May 2006 Forecast:
“Benefit payments now accountg for almost 1/5 of toal payroll earnings, up from less than 1/6 in 2001. …
This is hardly surprising. Healthcare spending is on a double digit growth path get again…reaching a level of $6,280 per person in the US, about 20% of personal income. This is driving up health insurance costs…This is 60% more on a person-by-person basis than Switzerland – a nation that spends the second most on healthcare per person in the world. Oh, by the way, they [the Swiss] are on average older than we are and live longer than we do.
As a nation, we spend more money on publicly provided healthcare than Canada. …keep in mind that the sale of [pharmaceutical] products remains at about 10% of the total health bill, exactly what it was a decade ago. [Rising cost has nothing to do with drug costs.]
Most of the debate on the issue seems to focus on who is going to pay, but this misses the point. No matter who is paying, we all pay. If insurance pays, premiums rise. If employers pay, take home pay goes down. If the government pays, taxes go up.
The issue in the U.S. is that we have a wasteful system that encourages consumption that isn’t effective from a cost-benefit viewpoint. Until this fundamental issue is understood, nothing much will change.”
I heard an analysis on a KPBS talk show, and the author said that our health care premiums are so high because insurance covers non-catastrophic things like lab tests and office visits. If we had true health insurance, i.e. coverage for catastrophic events, then the premiums would be much less and more people would have insurance. He says why should insurance cover your office visit? It’s like your auto insurance covering your oil change. Do you have any idea how high auto insurance premiums would be if the insurance covered new tires, maintenance, oil changes?
I have compassion for the poor, and I donate money to organizations in India that feed and educate the poor. I dontated to a hospital in India, after I was fortunate to have a life-saving appendectomy a few years ago, realizing that had I lived in India’s back country, I would have died. Let’s all have a little compassion. Not everyone is fortunate enough to be born in an industrialized country, and not everyone has an IQ over 100. We have to provided work incentives and opportunities to all, unless we enjoy the power we get from being able to have them all as our servant class. I don’t get off on that kind of power trip.
