American Health Care

It turns out that we spend more money on health care in this country (per person) than anywhere else. We spend a lot more. Now there is great debate about SCHIPP. This is the program that provides health care for children who are too wealthy to receive medicaid, but who "need" some sort of coverage. The different states have different ideas about how much money your family can make for you to qualify. Bush doesn't think that it's fair for children to receive federal and state money to help pay for their health insurance, especially if some of them will no longer use private health insurance. We have the highest infant mortality rate in the "developed" nations. We rank 54th in overall health care quality. We have the highest amount of uninsured people. People over the age of 65 qualify for medicare. They receive government subsidized care regardless of their wealth. There are now some provisions being placed to increase the amount that people pay based on their income. That way, the people whose income is over ten million dollars per year don't necessarily get free health care if they are over 65. The thing that is strange is how we decide that those under 18 are different than those over 65. Both of these groups are vulnerable to inability to care for themselves. I think this is more so for the children. I would personally rather see us pay for the children and eliminate the medicare. At 65 you have a much better shot than at 5. 5 year olds have no chance whatsoever of gainful employment that is sufficient to generate income that will pay for health care. A social safety net should consider that issue. Perhaps the five year old is the responsibility of the family more so than the sixty-five year old. I don't really know, though. We are supposed to take care of our family. This includes parents and children. Before medicare, families stuck together and took care of each other. If an elderly parent couldn't work, the kids would take care of them. Now, the government does. But if they take care of my parents, why not my kids? If the interest is in taking care of the American population, it would be all of the vulnerable parts. I see people who are 98 years old in the intensive care unit for three months at a cost of at least $500,000. Their life expectancy is probably less than one year. So we're spending that to keep them alive for a few more months. If we can do that, then we can take care of health care costs for an awful lot of kids who can't even see a pediatrician. Whole Foods has HSA insurance, where the workers get a "savings account" to pay for health care. It dramatically reduces costs, because when it's "my money" I don't want to spend it. People tell me all the time that they'll do it "as long as medicare pays for it." They won't do it, though, if they have to pay for it. In fact, they won't even do it if they have to pay a significant portion of it. But if they behaved like it really was their money, then we could afford to cover all of the people who aren't insured. The insurance companies waste an incredible amount of money. As far as I'm concerned, about 100% of their profits are a waste of money. They should all be mutual companies. It's not a risk sharing pool the way it's structured right now. It's a "business". They're in the business of taking money and not paying health care costs. The better that they are at it, the greater the share of the pie that they take out of health care. It just doesn't make sense. It's a guaranteed increase in cost with no benefit. They don't increase efficiency in any way. The only way to increase efficiency is to have the patients (the consumer) involved in the spending (like with the savings accounts). I don't understand why we can't seem to get this right. It's not complicated, really. It's just that no one wants to be honest about the fact that we have to limit our consumption (as health care consumers) and take more responsibility for what we're spending. If we were all shopping around carefully, we would look at the whole thing. We would also look around more carefully at the Insurance companies. They aren't under the kind of pressure to perform that retailers are. It's easier, for sure, to see what a shirt costs at different stores. We can also assess shirt quality somewhat easier than health care insurance quality. But we're not challenged to do it. So we don't do it.