Purpose of a Nation
Consider at a very high level: Our country is the greatest and mightiest country — probably ever in history. Sounds chauvinistic but by any of a number of economic measures, the AVERAGE person in no other country has had the wealth that ours has.
However, for all this wealth, you tell me that the richest-per-capita nation in the world can’t provide basic health care? Many countries far poorer and more squalid do provide health care for all citizens. How can it be that the mightiest can not? I don’t believe it. If we can put a man on the moon, we certainly can provide basic health care for all citizens.
What is going on?
It is all an accounting trick. Our health system charges outrageous prices, often for simple procedures, and often forgoes payment. One doctor I know of charges $26,000 for a single injection. That $26,000 is enough to pay for a year of college. The insurance company said, forget that, you only get $4000. For 1/2 hour work that sounds pretty good. The price of healthcare is outrageous and is not related to service given.
What is money?
Money is a substitute for work. I build a table, I sell it, and the money represents the work. Lets ask instead: how much WORK is required to provide healthcare for the entire nation? Every person has a certain need to see a doctor, to get help from a nurse, and to spend some time in the hospital. Add it all up? How much work is it?
Would it take 10% of the population to provide healthcare for the 100%? That means: 10% of all the work being done would have to be on healthcare, and it means that approximately 10% of everyone’s working time (income) would have to go to healthcare. If 20% of the population is needed to provide healthcare for everyone, then it would be 20%. If 50% of the population is needed for healthcare, it would be 50%. But the question is: how can the WORK needed to take care of everyone, be MORE than the total work that the nation can do?
The model above is simplistic, because it assumes everyone gets paid the same, and that is not true. Clearly the 10% population working as doctors want to get more than 10% of the income to be had — and it might be 20% but it is still a contained figure.
The way that the scary stories are put together, is to take the wildly inflated prices (the $26K/shot) and multiply by the number of people. Never mind the fact that most people don’t actually pay that.
Wildly inflated prices make good news
It is like the police who make a drug bust to find $1M of cocaine in a dealer’s care … never mind the fact that the dealer probably paid $10K for it. The street price of a drug is the amount that user pays for a small quantity, and between the guy caught and the users there are hundreds of people who make a profit on the difference. Yet the story is more dramatic if you use the most wildly inflated price.So what is happening is that someone is taking the “price” of health care as some sort of face value of what is normally charged, and multiplying by the number of people, getting an unrealistic sum which is nonsense.
Instead, think about how much work it would take: how many doctors, how many nurses. You say we can’t afford it, but that is only because the prices have no bearing on the work involved, and most people don’t pay that anyway.
I went to a wonderful talk recently about our healthcare system. They reiterated a lot that you already know: our current system is designed to let you go to the brink of dying, and then charge you a tremendous amount of money to do procedures. It is as if it was designed purposefully to try and extract the most amount of profit possible.
Why do drug companies have to make a profit?
Why is it that Americans pay 10 times as much for the same drug that Canadians buy? That is because the American drug prices bears no relation to reality. Instead, the drug companies have powerful lobbies, that control congress, and provide a monopoly to allow them to get higher prices.
The system is set up as way to trick people out of money, not to provide health care, and that needs to change.The current healthcare system is like an ultra-fancy hotel, with all sorts of bellboys jumping to do things for you, and expecting a tip. And outside people are sleeping in the rain. Someone looks at the ultra-fancy hotel, and says “we can’t afford to get a roof over everyone’s head”. It is true that we can’t afford an ultra-fancy hotel for everyone, but that is not our goal. A simple roof may be modest, but it can be achieved. Yet the bell-boys HATE this idea because their job depends upon rich customers. They want to make sure that only people with money get into the hotel. A structural change is needed, and more people will be working, and we can at least get a roof over everyone’s head.
Ultra-Expensive Medical Care
Our goal is health care for everyone, not the inflated price ultra-rich hotel, but the simple roof. The health care that we have insists that everyone has to have the ultra-expensive medical care. However, if we set the goal that every citizen gets a modest but suitable health care, it absolutely can be done!
This needs to be a goal of nation: to provide basic healthcare to everyone. If we make it a national priority we can find a way to do it.But the current medical establishment is not going to like it. Currently, they like the ability pick and choose, and charge only the highest rates. More often, they wait until someone is in desperate need, because that is when you can charge the most. It is highly unethical.
Did you know that for every $5 paid, only $4 dollars goes to the medical care? 20% of all the money goes to the insurance companies for administrative overhead. I thought this was shocking but it is actually worse. Obamacare makes it a requirement that Insurance companies spend at least 80% on medical care. What is shocking is that several insurance companies had to mail refunds to insurers and medical people because they spent MORE than 20% on overhead.
Think about it. All an insurance company is supposed to do is to take in money, and pay the doctors. Credit card companies take only a few percent (3% or 4%) and still make tremendous amounts of money. What do the insurance companies do with 16% or 17% of the money they take in when it doesn’t go to medicine? They spend it doing research on ways to deny people coverage that they have paid for! Again, this is the gambler, winner-take-all mentality that our health care system.
Greatness
Our country can do great things, and I want to live in a great country. I don’t believe that greatness comes from sending deadly force and killing hundreds of thousands of people on the other side of the world. Greatness will come only by providing the best place on earth to live. Greatness is a system that guarantees a basic level to all citizens. A system that waits for people to trip, and then preys on them to charge wildly inflated prices at a time when you don’t have any choices, is NOT a great system, and is it something I am NOT proud of. Many countries with far more modest means do a far better job of providing basic health care.
Does Obama-Care go far enough? Certainly not, but it is a step, and it was the only thing that was politically possible at the time. Since then half the politicians have been fighting to take it away from us.
Saying we can’t afford to provide a basic healthcare is like attending a fancy feast, and saying we can’t afford to feed all the children. Perhaps the problem is that our priorities are screwed up. There is plenty of food, maybe we don’t need to be so greedy with the feast at this time, and make sure that everyone gets at least enough to live on. There are enough people in the country to provide healthcare for everyone. We just need to get the priorities straight.