The Health Care Debate

Why doing nothing isn’t an option…

As the Supreme Court begins hearing arguments today for and against “Obamacare,” here’s one sure thing: We can’t keep pretending health care is not a problem in this country.

This graph shows health care spending as a percentage of our total economy in America.*

health

No matter which “Party” you favor, no matter how you label yourself, there’s no getting around the facts in that graph.

Any reasonable person will understand that we must do something to contain health care costs. We must at least try.

Our current system is bankrupting not only individual families but our national economy.

It would be one thing if the United States was the healthiest nation on earth, or even if statistics proved we are getting healthier. In fact, it is just the opposite.

Check this out:

overmedicated-america

Ignore the hyperbole of those headlines. It’s the facts, the data, I want you to understand. The numbers are not exaggerated.

The only part of healthcare America ranks first in is cost: The US spends more on its health care than any other nation. By a lot. And what do we get for the ever-increasing amounts we spend on our health?

We rank 39th in infant mortality, 43rd for adult female mortality, 42nd for adult male mortality, and 36th overall for life expectancy. And those trends are getting worse each year, not better.

  • Do you know which hospital in your town has the highest rate of MRSA infections in post-surgical patients?
  • Do you know which doctors in your town have been “forced” into rehab to keep their licenses?
  • Do you know how much your doctors are “paid” to conduct drug studies, how often they are invited to “speak” at medical confabs on cruise ships, or exclusive golf resorts — all paid for by the pharmaceutical companies whose drugs they prescribe to you? (In Radio, we call that payola, and it’s illegal.)
  • Do you even know where the vast majority of the money our nation spends on health care goes?
  • Can you explain why my health insurance would prevent me from taking the generic version of Lipitor, even though my doctor would prescribe it, and force me to continue to take Crestor, costing me/them an extra $1200 per year minimum?
  • Can you explain why drugs cost more in America than the identical drugs cost in any other nation on earth?
  • Do you realize that, despite the screaming and propaganda, there are nations which seem to have figured out better solutions than ours — based on statistics– at far less cost, that are enormously popular with their own citizens?

I’m honestly not sure why health care reform is such an explosive issue, but to pretend we can leave everything as it has been, is asinine.

We’ll hear lots of inflammatory rhetoric about freedom and government intrusion into our lives over the coming months, but do your homework before you blindly join one side or the other. Don’t rely on political ads, which distort and usually lie to get your “lizard brain” to react out of fear.

We have to figure out how to make health care cost less and work better. It’s that simple.

 

*The Baseline Scenario