The Obama Administration is being urged by top healthcare economists to take the increasing rate of spending on health care seriously, and implicitly, to take the step he has long avoided, affordable single payer, universal health care, without user fees, paid for by taxes.
That's what's necessary if we want to have an acceptable reduction in the huge number of preventable deaths in the US, due to denied care, basically, we in the US keep sliding lower in health markers. (see links at end)
Americans are increasingly desperate for real affordable health care like the people in other developed countries have.
A recent study in Health Affairs is identical to my own posts in explaining bluntly that healthcare spending will crowd out all other spending, even if the growth in rates is curtailed to the very modest growth targets that Obama has stated are his goal.
We need far more.
Experts are saying that cutting the cost of health care is essential to affordability, something the Obama administration seems to be in denial about. (probably because single payer heath care is the only way to do it effectively?)
A recent article in Health Affairs explained that the rising cost of health care threatens to squeeze out at least half of other spending, if Obama sticks to his promise of reducing the growth in healthcare spending marginally. Thats not enough, it has to be rolled back, by 30-50% to make healthcare affordable to the bottom 4/5 of American wage earners, in oter words, make healthcare affordable for working people, without huge subsidies, paid for by taxing the upper one fifth, a subject that has not been discussed to date, .
"The article is one of several in the September/October issue of Health Affairs that focus on health spending.
The Chernew analysis, written with two other health economists, Richard A. Hirth from the University of Michigan and David M. Cutler, from Harvard, calculates what would happen if health spending continued to outpace overall economic growth by two percentage points over the next 75 years. The result, they conclude, would be that all of the real increase in per capita income — and then some — would be absorbed by health care.
Even cutting health care growth by half, down to only a single percentage point faster than economic growth, would means that more than half of real income growth would be devoured by health care, the authors calculate.
While predicting the future is difficult, even for economists, the point that Mr. Chernew and his colleagues make is a simple one: the country’s growing pile of medical bills is going to weigh more heavily in the years to come if nothing is done to restrain spending growth.
The higher amounts will prove to be a growing burden on public programs like Medicaid, for example, forcing states to curtail spending on education and social services if they want to balance their budgets,
Mr. Chernew and his colleagues say. People will increasingly spend more of their income on health care, the economists predict, and the working poor will be increasingly unable to afford coverage because they make too much money to qualify for government help, but the premiums will be increasingly unaffordable.
"It’s imperative that we can control in the rate of spending growth," Mr. Chernew said."
Single payer is clearly inevitable, IF we want to make healthcare affordable for the 4/5 of us who currently can't afford it without subsidies. Obama may be avoiding discussing that necessity, even though it's known to work, because of his loyalties to the corporate interests at his discussion table, but out of deference to those of us who are on the table, being carved up, and eaten, he needs to either do his job, or resign.
- U.S. Ranks Last Among Other Industrialized Nations on Preventable Deaths 101,000 Fewer Americans Would Die Annually If the U.S. Improved Its Preventable Death Rate to that of the Three Top Performing Nations
- The Health of Nations (Ezra Klein)
- Sick Around The World (PBS Frontline)
- Foreign free riders and the high price of US medicines
- Trends in Underinsurance and the Affordability of Employer Coverage, 2004-2007 This is why the so called "grandfather clause" is going to preserve an unacceptable situation if it is included. the insurance companies claim its needed to prevent their losing their most profitable customers. Well, then, they need to gracefully bow out of the picture, not sacrifice 310 millions Americans for their ill-gotten profit.
- The Manipulation of HMO Medical Testing People are being denied medical tests they need and the tests they do receive are increasingly seen by many doctors as being manipulated for the insurance companies benefit. Many doctors are dropping out of the insurance system because they are not given the ability there to do their jobs. HMOs keep pushing the "standard of care" (the level of treatment considered to be the minimum legally acceptable) down, preventing people from getting needed care. That, and the justifiably infamous user fees in the US, which discourage the sicker poor, but not the healthy rich, from even seeking care, is killing people. For example, we have a real problem with people in the US not getting care for many emergent illnesses - a real public health disaster.