The Incredible inefficiency of the private market.
Bet you didn't expect an economist like myself to say this about the private market running our health care system, but Sicko makes it abundantly clear that the market system fails us in providing our population the most inexpensive and high quality care that you'd expect from a free market based system.
That's because basic healthcare never was meant to be a consumer good but rather it has always been a common good as evidenced by other market based industrialized nations which uniformly provide universal healthcare to their citizens.
Below the fold I'll explain how to debunk the "market based is better" talking point fed to us courtesy of the insurance and pharmaceutical industry.
First let's define the concept of the common good in layman's terms. Here is a comment I made in NYCEVE's diary, which explains the idea of the common good in precisely the terms we are all familiar with ( even republicans):
healthcare as the common good:
just like the roads in the US are a common good to provide access to various places to ALL americans, regardless of how often we use them or where we head on them (based solely on our own individual needs),......so too it is with health care.
Both provide a common good infrastructure that is available based upon need rather than money.
To further explain the deficiency of the "market is best" folly in healthcare we can then add a sprinkling of fact such as:
The private insurance market has failed to control costs; we have the most free market in insurance in the industrialized world and we pay TWICE as much for our healthcare.
Profits, marketing costs, duplication, and bureaucracy currently waste 30% of every healthcare dollar handled in our nation.
All plans that expand the business of the private insurance industry with look-alike plans are doomed to fail because they won’t control costs.
http://www.onecarenow.org/...
And then having a reality check pointing to the alarming 2003 outcome in terms of quality based on life expectancy compiled by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, makes it painfully obvious how devastating it is to treat health care as a market based consumer good rather than the common good. See for yourself where the US lands in terms of life expectancy vs health care costs!
Probably the most eye-opening piece of info you can use to sway those who adhere to the "market is best" mantra, is to have them consider the interaction of the Employers' Stake in Single Payer and the scourge of increased outsourcing of american jobs.
Without a comprehensive Medicare for all, we will continue to lose jobs to other nations. Those other nations don't force employers to pay ridiculous premiums (average in the USA for an employer based family plan was $9,979 in 2005). I can't blame an employer for going where he can save $5,000 per employee a year in insurance costs alone.
The reason health care is one of the top three issue in this election isn't hard to understand from the overall macro-economic level either:
Us Healthcare expenditures have been rising faster than any other component of our GDP, except maybe defense costs. Growing at an annual pace of 6.8%-9.1% since 1999, it has reached 2.1 trillion dollars in 2006, making it 16% of our GDP.
www.cms.hhs.gov/NationalHealthExpendData
The impact of our health care spending crisis on our country cannot be underestimated. To appreciate the magnitude of the 2.1 trillion dollars spent on health care in the US in 2006, it might be worthwhile to compare it to the entire Defense Department spending for 2006 at $499.4 billion.
In total US military spending is less than 4% of our GDP compared to a 16%,..... or a factor four more, spent on health care in the US.
The US health care expenditures are projected to reach a whopping 4.1 trillion dollars by 2016.
The american public is waking up fast to this huge domestic nightmare not just from the horrific personal standpoint, but from a disasterous national economic point of view as well.
As Michael Moore says in Sicko, it's time we start thinking of WE rather than ME.
It is indisputable that health care is a common good with a huge impact on our economy. Framing it that way will dampen the "me" scare tactics employed by the opposition, and make it an americans united for health care transformation issue.
To see what you can do to make HR 676 a reality, please check out:
SiCKO Cure!
If we go the 1962 Canadian way with Tommy Douglas, starting public health insurance in 1962, beginning in the province of Saskatchewan ,.... California may have to lead the way by getting the provisions in Senate Bill 840 as passed by their legislature implemented.
In the case of stem cell research, California has already proven it can take the lead on a large national health issue.
It took Canada four more years for the nationwide adoption of Saskatchewan's model of public health insurance in 1966.
Let's make sure the US oligarchy with its strong propaganda machine paid for by the insurance and pharmaceutical industry, won't snuff out the viable revolution in health care started by Michael Moore's Sicko, which if supported by Governor Schwartzenegger in California, could then spread nationwide.
Support of HR 676 should be the lithmus test for any current and future congressional candidate to get our backing, and at every presidential candidate event we should insist that HR 676 be the ulimate goal for fixing our health care crisis.
So far Edwards has impressed me most:
In early January, in his speech to the DNC, Edwards' demanded that the "Democratic party finally quit talking about access to healthcare, when we know what that means: not universal healthcare. He further noted that "we cannot allow America's HealthCare policy to be set by big insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies."
Soon thereafter, Edwards unveiled his plan for Universal Health Care. The only truly universal healthcare plan of any top tier candidate.
Are we ready to join all other western nations in providing healthcare for ALL?