Japan spends half per person on healthcare than we do. Europeans spend a little over 50% of what we do. These nations are as healthy or healthier than we are and they cover everyone. This indicates that we waste close to half of what we spend on healthcare.
Worst yet even with Obamacare we don’t insure about 14% of our citizens. Millions more suffer from high deductible policies that are like no insurance at all. We get nothing for about half the near $3 trillion we spend every year on healthcare. That’s $1 ½ trillion or $1,500,000,000,000 lost every year. That number is astronomical. It is almost incomprehensible.
Here’s what $1,500,000,000,000 is:
Our entire annual military budget is “only” about $600 billion. Imagine all the aircraft carriers, other naval ships, Army tanks and helicopters and Air Force fighters and bombers. Add all the maintenance, and replacement of that equipment and military personnel salaries together and you get $500 billion. Our healthcare wastes over twice that every year.
The total national student debt crisis is “only” around $1 trillion dollars. Our healthcare wastes almost 1 ½ times that total every year.
Our federal deficit is “only” about $680 billion. Our healthcare waste is over twice that yearly.
We have suffered some terrible hurricanes. Hurricane Katrina destroyed $128 billion. Hurricane Sandy did $50 billion in damages. Andrew hit $44 billion. Healthcare waste costs as much as 12 hurricane Katrinas or 30 Hurricane Sandys or 34 hurricane Andrews every year.
Our healthcare waste comes to about $4,000 yearly for every man, woman and child in the U.S.
$1 1/2 trillion dollars is 9% of GDP. This means about one of every $10 spent in the U.S. yearly is for healthcare waste. We get nothing for it! With $4,000 for every man, woman and child in the U.S. going down the drain every year, is it any wonder we have:
1. An economy crawling along with high unemployment, underemployment and poor paying jobs?
2. College graduates who owe $1 trillion can’t get good jobs. Student loans defaults are a national agony and economic crisis.
3. Credit card debt is rampant. Much of which is unpaid medical bills.
4. We have trillions of dollars of work needed on aging bridges, sewers, roads and power grids that are being neglected from lack of funds.
5. A secure retirement is becoming a mirage for most.
Healthcare spending is still rising at about 3% per year! Our population is aging and will need more care. We have rising rates of obesity, high blood pressure and diabetes. These will probably cause higher rates of cancer and heart disease. All of these rising costs will hit a system that is overpriced and heading for collapse making more higher premiums and deductibles inevitable. We may achieve "universal coverage" in name only. It will be rationed in a different way.
We are in deep trouble but someday we will be looking back at today as “the good old days”. Baby boomers will be retiring. Millions of doctors and nurses will be among them. As the demand for care increases, the supply of providers will shrink. Already many doctors refuse Medicare and Medicaid patients. There will be doctor shortages and a worse nurse shortage than we already have. Less will be paying into Medicare and more taking out. Somewhere down the road Medicare will have financing problems just when it is needed the most.
The government is already heading for bankruptcy. We can’t look to the government to pay for this. Preventing illness and squeezing the waste out of our healthcare are the only ways out of this.
We must learn from the single payer Canadians, Japanese and Western Europeans. We need our own form of single payer like expanding the original Medicare to include everyone. This is a necessary first step to reorganizing and fixing our pathetic healthcare.
From: http://reorganizehealthcare.com