A few days ago I quoted at length from an article by Karl Denninger, giving extensive background information about the current crisis in US health care. Today I came across another, this one by the equally authoritative Charles Hugh Smith, which looks at the problem from a different perspective, but comes to much the same conclusions. Here's an extract.
You may think only European countries have VAT (value-added taxes), but America has one, too--it's just hidden in the sprawling "healthcare" system, i.e. sickcare. A value-added tax (VAT) is a broad-based consumption tax designed to raise tax revenues from across the entire economy. Since it's in everything you buy, you can't escape paying it unless you go to another country without a VAT.
While the U.S. doesn't have an official VAT, it has an unofficial one that we all end up paying for indirectly: the 8% difference between what we pay for our bloated, fraud-ridden healthcare system and what our global competitors pay for their universal-care healthcare systems.
The U.S. spends 17% of its GDP (gross domestic product) on healthcare, while other advanced democracies spend between 6% and 9%. At a minimum, the U.S. pays a staggering 8% more of its $15 trillion GDP for a system that arguably leaves Americans less healthy than competing systems. (That is certainly the case in terms of life expectancy, natal care, body mass index, etc.)
. . .
American sickcare is sick for a number of reasons. One is that it is highly profitable to manage chronic lifestyle diseases such as heart disease and diabetes, while it is essentially profitless to encourage healthy lifestyles based on diet, fitness and positive mental health practices.
As a result, sickcare has zero interest (other than lip-service) in fostering (or emphasizing) prevention or in providing an integrated system of health which starts with what we do and eat every day.
. . .
It's also highly profitable to turn people into couch-potato media addicts who are also hooked on sugary, fatty, salty snacks, fast food and packaged food. Convincing people a handful of pills is all they need to restore health is also highly profitable.
. . .
Our national security and fiscal viability both depend on radically transforming sickcare before it brings down the nation.
There's more at the link, including several very informative charts. Highly recommended reading.
Intrigued by Mr. Smith's figures, I took the time to search for more information about comparative international health costs. There's a very informative report from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) titled 'Health At A Glance 2011' (link is to an Adobe Acrobat document in .PDF format). It includes this graph on page 151:
Those are some pretty mind-boggling numbers, aren't they? The chart certainly appears to support Mr. Smith's conclusions (and Mr. Denninger's, for that matter). If you're interested in the health care problem, the whole OECD report is worth reading.
Peter
It is interesting to note the US spends more per capita in public funding than Canada. As a Canadian who has worked in both systems, the best care is still in the US. No wonder many of us will remortgage the house to obtain Mayo level care. When your life is on the line, nothing else matters much.
ReplyDeleteAs a result, sickcare has zero interest (other than lip-service) in fostering (or emphasizing) prevention or in providing an integrated system of health which starts with what we do and eat every day.
ReplyDeleteWell, I know that I, for one, can't wait until we have national health care, and the government health system monitors and regulates what we do and what we eat, every day.
Maybe they can get us all up in the morning and push us through mandatory exercise in front of the telescreen.
Interesting that the PIIGs are all way down in this graph, even though they are all accused of abusing their health systems...
ReplyDeleteI guess there are different kinds of abuse?