BAND AIDS & DUCT TAPE ARE NOT AN RX FOR HEALTHCARE!
The largest hole in our country’s financial bucket is our convoluted healthcare “system”. Of course it is not a system, but instead a conglomeration of an untold number of different programs that overlap, leave large gaps, cost double the worldwide rate, deliver below average healthcare, and that are the leading single cause of millions of American jobs moving overseas.
Six former U.S. presidents, both Republicans and Democrats, have attempted to solve this most critical political issue. All failed! Barrack Obama has a giant box of band aids and John McCain has a giant roll of duct tape. Both tell us that they are going to fix the system. Right!
A large portion of the $2 trillion (plus) a year that we spend on “healthcare” is siphoned off by special interest groups that have nothing to do with actual healthcare. For example, the hundreds of billions of “healthcare” dollars that go to trial lawyers and insurance companies every year do not provide even one aspirin of medical care.
The New England Journal of Medicine, the most respected source of information in America for healthcare reported in 2006, that U.S. patients receive proper medical care from doctors and nurses only 55% of the time! That is downright scary and it is nothing to cling to!
In 2004, The Commonwealth Fund compiled the first international report that compared the healthcare quality in 29 advanced countries, including the U.S. Two major findings demand our attention. First, numerous countries provide their citizens with much better healthcare. Second, they accomplish that with about half as much money as we spend per citizen. For those that argue vehemently that they don’t want the healthcare arrangements that exist in other countries, I ask “Why not?” If I can get better healthcare and cut my premiums in half, I want to explore that option. No plan is perfect, but theirs is a lot closer to perfect than ours! Let’s talk about it.
For those whose door to their mind is locked and they cannot find the key, perhaps knowing that we are losing millions of American jobs to the same countries that offer better healthcare will motivate them to look for the key. Our American companies are needlessly at a huge financial disadvantage in international competition. Our companies like General Motors have to add an extra $2,000+ to the cost of every automobile and truck that their international competitors do not have to include. In other countries, their government pays the cost of healthcare. In America we make our companies add it to the price of a car, washing machine or lawn mower. As a result, our products cost more than theirs. Is this a good strategy?
Because of the extra healthcare cost and the fact that America has the second highest corporate tax rate in the world, many companies logically elect to locate some or all of their facilities in other countries that provide healthcare for their workers and have low (or no) corporate tax. This is not rocket science. Would someone please explain it to Senator Obama and Senator McCain.
There is a major distinction between the government providing the premium and the government taking over national healthcare. Clearly it makes perfect sense for the government to dictate automobile pollution standards, like the requirement of catalytic converters. However, it would not make sense to suggest that the government should build the cars in order to achieve the standards.
And so it is with healthcare. Currently, we are like the man who has a pistol in both hands and then shoots himself in both feet. Hello! Business as usual will soon mean NO BUSINESS! We must adjust our strategies to the reality of the world marketplace – whether we like it or not.
The most important step is simply recognizing that we need a comprehensive evaluation of all of our many options for healthcare. Then we must decide what makes the most sense given our needs, our resources and the real consequences of continuing to ignore what all of our competitors are doing.
Our next blog will address critical factors, options and opportunities that are inherent in the $2 trillion healthcare issue.
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