Edwards Leads with Universal Health Care
Although the 2008 presidential campaign has already been filled with speculation, positioning, mistatements, apologies, and explorations, John Edwards' concrete proposal for universal health care may be the first serious policy prescription from any of the campaigners. And it is an ambitious first salvo, which promises to give us a serious debate about America's future. Edwards floated the idea last year, but yesterday released concrete details (pdf), including a frank acknowledgment that the 120 billon dollar plan will require a roll-back of the Bush tax cuts on upper-income Americans.
The Edwards plan is already getting applause form other bloggers. We'll save our own in-depth analysis until we have had a chance to review the details. I will say that the plan seems to borrow much of the responsibility-spreading that we saw in the newly-enacted Massachusetts plan and Governor Schwarzenegger’s recent proposal for California. The bottom line is that once business and government have each done its part, there is also a mandate that every individual buy insurance. This might just work.
(Notably, Barack Obama last week also called for universal health care, setting a six year time-table, and Hillary Clinton has been a longstanding supporter of the idea. Neither has a concrete policy paper out as of this date.)
We cannot even begin to correct the runaway cost of healthcare and retirement until we are willing to face the facts eyeball to eyeball.
The recently published GAO 2006 Financial Report for the United States gives a loss for the year of $4,600,000,000,000 -- thats 4.6 trillion dollars. This corresponds to almost $3,000 a month for every full time worker in the US. Most of this is attributable to yearly increases in unfunded healthcare and retirement expenses.
We can't tax our way out of this -- there would be no income left to buy products and services and our economy would collapse.
We also can't "unfund" the programs. There is a reason why every other industrial country in the world (except South Africa) supplies health support for their citizens. Its because they know this is necessary for public stability. Here in the US, no one is denied service, but those without insurance use the most wasteful services such as city hospital emergency rooms long after their condition could have been properly addressed.
Sooooo -- what to do. We must rebuild the system from the ground up to increase quality life and career span.
Medicare to cover all citizens. The overhead cost of delivering medical services through Medicare is less than one third that of private insurers. Also, employees are thrown out of the workforce prematurely because of employer"s consideration of their effect on group health insurance rates. It has been shown that the health of such discarded employees deteriates prematurely.
Automation of the Health Delivery System. Place all prescriptions, diagnosis, test results etc. in a database. Computers can process information orders of magnitude more cheaply than humans. Also the computers could then assist with diagnosis, find drug incompatiblities and other trends long before they are detected today.
Extensive use of walk-in clinics to replace more expensive health care delivery options.
Go after preventative healthcare with a vengeance. Include education for healthy life styles in the schools. Require check ups of all individuals with computer monitoring of any at risk conditions.
Attack chronic diseases which account for over 75% of all health care expenses. A major federal effort to launch stem cell research with mandatory publication.
In 1950 to 1955, the average retirement age in the US was 67 years and in 1995 to 2000 had dropped to 62 years. Let's get this on track before multi-trillion dollar losses turn into multi-trillion dollar debts and our economy is destroyed by hyperinflation.
February 11, 2007 7:24 PM | Reply | Permalink