Healthcare Crisis or Cost Crisis?
This is special late weekend addition of the King of Simple News.
I want to throw another wrench in the gears on the subject of healthcare. We don’t really have a healthcare crisis; we have a healthcare COST crisis.
Millions of Americans have no healthcare insurance due to the cost. Millions more are under- insured, due to the cost. Medicare is going broke, due to the cost and due to purposely induced monetary inflation.
Keep in mind, that a person making minimum wage could not buy a good family healthcare plan with their entire gross annual income.
In Mikeronomics, that means that healthcare costs in America have outrun the total value of human labor. Now that’s a problem isn’t it?
So then, why don’t Americans make enough money to afford American healthcare? Where did all of these people who can’t afford healthcare come from? How has the value of their annual labor fallen below the annual cost of healthcare?
The sword of purposeful monetary inflation is sharp on both sides. While funded liabilities such as the “National Debt” benefit our government from monetary inflation where cheaper dollars can repay old debts; Medicare is an unfunded liability, meaning that the dollars promised to the 78 MILLION baby boomers for medical care is rising each and every day from inflationary pressures. The government has to collect those rising dollars by taxing a falling average wage.
In large part, the same government that is going to bankrupt us with healthcare solutions (ha-ha), purposely imported the problem of low wage earners in order to promote growth and at the same time import people willing to live at 3rd world standards.
As fewer and fewer people could afford healthcare under our system of exponential population growth, the burden was shifted to those who could afford healthcare. We have now reached the tipping point of mathematical possibilities and the current solution is that government will pay for the problem that they created, with borrowed money and higher taxes.
And, next November, most Americans will (out of total ignorance of basic math and economics), reelect those same dunderheads to another term on the promise of greater economic growth.
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Mike..
Kind of disagree today..
We elect the same mistakes, because our choice is between terrible, and horrible.. I don’t think we have had a real choice in my forty plus years of voting..
And, I don’t think inflation is the cause of the rise in health care.. I think it’s more politics.. Real free enterprise is not at work here.. It has more to do with “pricing power”.. We have the most corrupt health care.. We have rules/laws that always favor the cost of health care.. There is a reason we pay more for care than other countries, and that reason, is that the health care, and insurance industry have more influence over our political system than anywhere else.. Why can Cuba afford healthcare, and the u.s. can’t.??
For the answer, go back to my first paragraph..
wma…
But wait, Mike. Were we not always taught, that ignorance was bliss? What is your definition of bliss? (Big Lies, Increasing Social Surrender) -bb
The health care cost crisis is partly due to falling incomes of large numbers of working people and partly due to the profit protection racket that is our health care system. Attempting to solve it by requiring the uninsured to buy insurance is wildly unreasonable. Imagine what their solution will be for the homeless.
It’s not just Medicare that’s broke. The US government is insolvent and dependent on loans from abroad to fund all its operations. One glaring line item on this budget are 2 foreign wars and military bases all over the world. If we can’t afford to take care of our own people, we surely can’t afford imperial expansion.
In the olden days the Empires collected tribute from the barbarians, stole their raw materials and took home slave workers to help pay for military expenditures. We don’t do that-we simply allow the corporations to steal the raw materials and our government even pays “contractors” outrageous sums to quell the rabble. Our military adventures are simply another transfer of wealth from the working people to the Predator Class.
The health care reform package may be the straw that broke the camel’s back, but the camel’s back was already strained to the breaking point by massive fraud and corruption between corporate predators and government stooges looting and plundering anyhow and anywhere they can get away with it.
I think it is a responsibility crisis. Look around a Wal-Mart or more especially an “All You Can Eat Buffet” at a local restaurant. You are looking at a large part of the problem. Physical work will cure much of our problems at zero cost.
Thanks to all for the thought provoking comments.
Wma, Inflation is a reality that we live with, and soon, hyper-inflation will be the new reality. In the scheme of things, wages were supposed to have risen with inflation, otherwise we have stagflation. An oversupply of workers and Fed that prints money with no backing, is the recipe for stagflation.
Much of the costs of medical care is promoted by the threat of lawsuits; a large and hidden cost. Unnecessary tests are administered by the thousands each and every day in order that no stone was left unturned in the event that something should go wrong. Americans have been led to believe that life is not dangerous. We have government, military and police protection and doctors who can fix anything and reverse any of our poor life choices. Tort reform and court reform would help.
As far as voting goes, I’ll use my same patent argument. If the problem is bad choices, why do millions rally around the candidates, try to touch them like idols, donate money, donate campaign labor, etc., etc. to get these poor choices elected? Why doesn’t the public make a statement by voting all incumbents out?
As an individual, you may consider your choice between candidates as terrible, but the multitudes buy the American Dream….Economic Growth myth, hook, line, and sinker.
Bobcat said, “Attempting to solve it (healthcare) by requiring the uninsured to buy insurance is wildly unreasonable. Imagine what their solution will be for the homeless.
I’m with you all the way brother! The cost of this bill will the greatest underestimation in our nations history…but not by government figures.
Obama says, “[Obamacare will] not add one dime to the deficit.” In fact, the budget office reported that the bill would reduce deficits by a total of $81 billion in the decade starting 2010.
Hotrod said,
“…the camel’s back was already strained to the breaking point.”
And that is a point that no one is talking about, as they treat each critical problem as if it were the only issue that we face. Similar to putting a bandage on the wound of a patient who isn’t breathing.
Ridgerunner, Welcome to the conversation. We are in fact an unhealthy nation of Super-sized everything. People walk around with soft drink cups that appear to be small barrels with a handle.
The wealthy and wannabe wealthy go to the health clubs to meet with their “personal trainer,” and pay someone to mow their own lawn.
Many hit the emergency room if their child sneezes or if they get a splinter in their finger…yep, we’re a mess.
However, the healthcare costs are real. I had a friend who is fit as a fiddle and injured his back. It was necessary to operate. The hospital bill alone for 4 days (no surgeons, rehab, etc.) was $142,000!
Total sales of Treasuries will increase to $2.38 trillion in the fiscal year that began Oct. 1, from $1.81 trillion in the year just ended. (Bloomberg)
My question remains, “How did healthcare insurance become a greater annual cost than the gross yearly income of some of our citizens?”
Mike,
I can tell you part of the problem. We have a 3rd party administrator that supposedly goes to bat for our company to wade through the “red tape” and “fight” for our best interest in determining what is covered or not covered. They must take a percentage out of our “premiums”. By the way, isn’t “premium” a pleasant way to say bill? LOL
Healthcare is just a label the government placed on this package, that generates emotion and action amongst the population. The insurance plan the government has wrapped up in this emotional security blanket is nothing more than a transfer of more wealth (along with the stimulus) to the extreme upper crust and a huge grab of power, that will in a very short period of time, if it passes, help all Americans realize how fortunate we used to be with the abundant freedoms we enjoyed for many years. It is my belief that this is a one way trip however. If this thing (1900 pages of graft and corruption and greed) passes there will be no going back or correcting or repairing it. The term final comes to mind. Think uncomfortable, very uncomfortable. -bb
Billy b,
I agree, it’s all over but the shouting if the bill passes. Wait, do you hear that? I think the fat lady is singing!
The long term prospectus is a diminished living standard, and we may in fact choose that standard in order to fall under the poverty level and live off the other guy.
What amazes, stupefies, and mesmerizes me, is that we are calling on the arsonist to put out the fire! Government created this mess for gosh sakes…with our votes and blessings.
I really like your blog and i respect your work. I’ll be a frequent visitor.
The point about personal responsibility for healthy living is a valid one as far as it goes.
Unfornutately we are all subject to a dangerously toxic environment. Many of us suffer (or will) from diseases or conditions as a result. A hands off regulatory approach to business and industry accounts for most of the toxins in the environment., along with our dependence on the automobile as a means of transportation. I can accept blame if I smoke, eat excessively and make poor food choices, fail to get adequate exercise, etc. I have a hard time accepting blame foe mercury in the air from coal burning power plants, toxic runoff from industry and industrial scale farming, urethanes and formeldahyde in building materials and home furnishings, though I suppose it could be argued that since I buy those things I am still partially responsible.
The fundamental question is, do we have a right to affordable health care, or should we get it only if we can afford it? If we had a system that required that we pay out of our own pocket for health care, 95% of people could not afford conventional health care. Even if you factor out the costs we’re already paying through taxes which the government redistributes, most of us still couldn’t afford it.
I had a hernia repair five years ago. Out patient proceedure. I was in the hospital for a total of 75 minutes, check-in to discharge.
The hospital bill exceeded $6000.00, Surgeon $2500.00, anestesia $800.00.
I have seen a study that found that the average salary of doctors in the USA is $386,000.00/year. $1057.00/day. That’s AVERAGE.
I don’t know what the solution is, but the status quo just doesn’t seem right.
Wordherder,
Being a good doctor is a tough job and takes a very special person. The education is long and expensive, the hours are horrible, the exposure to every known illness in America is dangerous, and the stress of never getting it wrong is crushing.
I think of the banks on Wall Street whose average BONUS per person…was more than the average salary that doctors make. One healed and the other wounded.
Is there fraud and corruption amongst physicians? If humans are involved, there is. They just hauled off one of our local doctors for exactly that, but thankfully, he was the exception, not the rule.
When we see a doctors bill, we often forget that one doctor or one dentist is supporting an entire office of support staff that is also being paid.
A severe shortage of doctors is materializing, which is not so with politicians, Wall Street brokers/bankers, and Lawyers.
You asked an important question, “do we have a right to affordable health care, or should we get it only if we can afford it?”
If we go camping, don’t haul in firewood, don’t help cut the firewood, don’t help make the fire, and make no attempt to help prepare the food after which we don’t help with the cleanup; do we have the right to sit warmly by the fire and eat?
Your question is important Michael and one that should be pondered long and hard by all. Thanks, Mike