One sector of the US economy will constitute 2.5 TRILLION DOLLARS this year. That’s a lot a moola (yes, I know its an antiquated slang term, thank you very much) no matter how you look at it. To be precise, it represent 17.6% of our entire economy. And it’s costing me (and probably you, too) a fortune, my friends. Do you know what it is yet? Well read on and find out:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Health spending will hit $2.5 trillion this year, devouring 17.6 percent of the economy, as the White House and Congress consider major changes to the healthcare system, U.S. government economists said on Tuesday.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, known as CMS, forecast that the share of the economy devoted to health spending will jump a full percentage point from 2008. That would mark the biggest one-year increase recorded since the government began tracking the data in 1960.
Thanks to the recession, public health spending in programs such as the Medicaid program for the poor is ballooning, while private health insurance spending is slowing as more people lose employer-provided coverage, CMS reported.
“We project that the health share of the economy will increase steadily through 2018,” CMS economist Christopher Truffer told reporters. […]
The rate of increase in overall health spending — public and private combined — was estimated at 6.1 percent in 2008, the same as the previous year, but is projected to slow to 5.5 percent this year due to the effects of the recession. […]
By 2018, U.S. health spending will almost double from last year’s sum, soaring to $4.4 trillion and making up 20.3 percent of the overall economy, the economists reported in the journal Health Affairs.
How can this be? I thought the free market guarantees efficiency? How can health care costs be rising so rapidly, outpacing inflation year after year? Maybe we’re all just getting sicker. That must be it. And I’m sure health care is much more expensive in those countries that practice socialized medicine, right? Well, to steal borrow a popular blog’s name, sadly, no:
The United States spends more on healthcare than any other country, but its system is widely considered inefficient and it lags many other nations in key quality measures.
So, we spend more for less quality, or to use a term that our free marketeers will understand, we’re getting less bang for our bucks than most other countries in the world. But how can this be? We’re America! The best and the brightest place on earth. The hope of the world. The star of the show! Except we’re not, are we. Not when it comes to taking care of our own, anyway. We the people of the United States of America make Big Pharma happy (i.e., profitable), and we keep the Health Insurance Industry (that’s the people who get to decide what sort of medical treatment you’re entitled to rather than your own doctor) busy pushing paper around to little good effect and making you pay more for the privilege of being denied care, but what we don’t do is provide quality health care at an affordable cost. Unlike say, France, Switzerland or Germany to name but three. You know, Old Europe, where they have (gasp!) socialized medicine.
Shorter Steven D: We (everyone receiving medical care in the United States) are the proverbial fatted calf that is being sacrificed on the altar of the health care industry’s profits.
Now, if you are a senior executive at a multinational company or a trust fund baby or otherwise filthy rich (or a member of Congress), this probably doesn’t concern you very much. You can either afford the best health care money can buy or, in the case of Congress, the Federal Government is paying those costs for you. And certainly if you are a senior executive of a pharmaceutical company or major health insurance provider, you think there’s nothing wrong with a system that by 2018 will be eating up 4.4 TRILLION DOLLARS (damn that sounds like a lot doesn’t it?) and representing 20% of the nation’s economy. But if you are like me, you think our entire entire system of providing health care is farking bananas (i.e., batshit crazy). certainly any objective outside observer would suggest we consider alternatives to our present system in which costs are out of control and the quality of patient care for most people is declining more and more each year.
But that’s just my inner Communist/Liberal Fascist speaking. Yeah, that’s it. I’m sure of my doctor would just provide me with the latest and greatest psychotropic mood enhancing surgical treatment for my obsession with health care costs I’ll go back to being a cheerleader for the free market system we all know and love. Think my managed care provider will approve me?
Yeah, me neither.
