This is proof that throwing money at a problem doesn’t fix it.
We spend $3 trillion per year and what do we have to show for it? Fat sick people. (see: nothing good)
We spend almost 50% more per person than the second-highest spending country, yet have worse care and a lower life expectancy. Why?
Obesity. Lack of transparency in healthcare. Broken system of insurance and government funding. Big Pharma and political power.
Why do we let drug companies make a ton of profit on us? Other countries get their drugs for half what the US pays.
If we stripped away the insurance companies (who make profit on people being healthy when those people should just keep their money) and stop pushing pills for everything (so Big Pharma can make trillions on sick people staying sick), we could greatly reduce the cost of healthcare.
A move to a single payer system would solve a lot of our problems.
A flat cost structure would force companies to compete to drive the cost of delivering care below what they will get paid for providing the care. Increase in competition? Check. Lower prices? Check. People always covered? Check.
If we sliced our costs by 1/3, we’d be at $2 trillion per year. Which we could do in two years.
We could shave it down to $1 trillion within six years I bet. Which we could absolutely afford.
Here’s how we afford it: we already spend $1.2 trillion on medicare and medicaid. Reallocate the funds to the single-payer system. Reduce paperwork and bureaucracy for some cost savings too.
But where will the money come from if we’re spending most of our revenue on a universal basic income? Corporations and employees already pay Medicare/Medicaid taxes (7.5% each). Replace those taxes with a flat 15% SPHC (single-payer healthcare) tax on corporations, not employees. Based on my calculations from the above linked post, that would provide about $1.2 trillion for healthcare. Boom. Balanced the budget.
Let’s focus on preventative measures and actual care, not drugging people into dependency. Let’s put the burden of the system on the providers of healthcare instead of the recipients and we’ll see great improvements rapidly.
That’s how a real market is supposed to work. What we have, corporatism, is just benefiting insurance and pharmaceutical corporations.
By going to single-payer healthcare we provide better care for all who need it while not forcing the healthy to pay a high price for nothing (what we currently have with Obamacare – the giant handjob for insurance companies).