{"id":233,"date":"2008-11-26T21:40:00","date_gmt":"2008-11-26T21:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/2008\/11\/26\/233\/"},"modified":"2014-09-20T09:18:42","modified_gmt":"2014-09-20T14:18:42","slug":"233","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=233","title":{"rendered":"Why Health Care is a bit Sickly These Days"},"content":{"rendered":"

There’s a good post<\/a> under the “Economix” column on the NY Times site discussing why health care costs so much in the USA. A Princeton economist named Uwe Reinhardt writes that the USA spends about 40 percent more per capita for health care than what other developed nations spend, as adjusted for GDP per capita. Some of that cost involves our greater use of specialists and tests due to “defensive medicine” practices (i.e. doctors having to cover their butts in fear of lawsuits). Some of it is just the “brotherhood” of doctors making enough work to keep everyone in business; studies have found that in cities where there are a lot of specialists, the average use of specialists per patient goes up. Unfortunately, this does not result in better health. Some of it might be that we invent the latest and most expensive machines, drugs and procedures, and are the first to use them. But a study by the McKinsey Global Institute found that about 21 percent of the excess spending is due to administration and insurance overhead costs. <\/p>\n

In other words, our crazy system, with its health care corporations, insurance companies and government agencies shooting paperwork back and forth, requires a lot of people cross-checking each other, making sure that their organization isn’t left “holding the bag” for unexpected costs of patient care and treatments. Some of the administration cost also goes for insurers designing and marketing “gold-plated policies” to rich people who can afford truly humane and decent health coverage.<\/p>\n

I’ve said before that capitalism and health care don’t mix. I’m all in favor of free international markets for computers and refrigerators and long-distance phone calls and socks and sealing wax; if you get a computer that doesn’t work right or some sealing wax that doesn’t seal, you can get past that and move on. But when you make a mistake about buying health care, it can be fatal. And when you depend on your employer to buy health care for you, then you’re letting someone else play with your life. <\/p>\n

We accept a certain degree of socialism here in America. We allow state control and coordination of certain critical things that don’t get done properly under free markets. Those include schooling, police and fire protection, garbage collection, etc. We want to make sure that these things, which are essential to everyone, are fully accessible to everyone, not just to the rich. Unfortunately, health care is now less and less available to the poor and even the middle class. It’s time to bring health care into the crypto-socialism fold. There may still be a role for private enterprise in providing services, but only in the context of a government guaranteeing a reasonable level of care for everyone. I honestly hope that’s where President Obama and all his friends in Congress will soon take us. The American health care system is sick, and is making Americans sicker than they need be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s a good post under the “Economix” column on the NY Times site discussing why health care costs so much in the USA. A Princeton economist named Uwe Reinhardt writes that the USA spends about 40 percent more per capita for health care than what other developed nations spend, as adjusted for GDP per capita. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=233"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4684,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233\/revisions\/4684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}