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I think the idea that government naturally has to overspend is wrong. It is a meme that people tend to trot out whenever there is a political discussion (along
by anonjon 17y ago
I think the idea that government naturally has to overspend is wrong. It is a meme that people tend to trot out whenever there is a political discussion (along with the other side is bums and politicians are unethical crooks).
In this particular case, the idea is that we pay $100 billion a year of tax payer money. (For comparison sake, the F-22 program alone cost 65 billion including development. You could only buy 500 F-22s for $100 billion)
With that 100 billion dollars, we attempt to bring into line the 2.3 trillion dollars that we spend a year on healthcare. (16% of GDP).
16% of GDP is way more than other western countries spend on healthcare. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_compared#Cross-country_comparisons http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_compared#Cross-coun...
Other western countries spend about 8-10% GDP on healthcare.
So lets do the math. Lets say we spend tax money on healthcare and we only manage to get it down 1% from 16% to 15%. That would be a 1/16th reduction on 2.3 trillion dollars... approximately 140 billion dollars. So if we even manage to knock 1% off of the amount spent on healthcare by doing this, we've sent 40 billion dollars back to the taxpayers.
If we get more than 1% off of our %GDP towards healthcare, we start making some serious bucks for Americans. If we got our % spent on HC down to even 10% we would have made a 540 billion dollar win on this issue.
(Yes, it comes in the form of taxes, but it also means that in the long run you aren't paying as much for insurance premiums... health insurance premiums might as well be a tax that doesn't go to the government, as having healthcare isn't optional if you plan on living for a significant amount of time...)
- richcollins 17y agoYou are assuming that we would get the same value for the new amount spent.
- anonjon 17y agoYou are assuming that we are getting anywhere near optimal value from the 2.3 trillion that we already spend. Clearly we do not. Compared to other countries there has got to be absolutely TONS of wastage. We die sooner, we spend more of our own money and we spend more government money. lose/lose.
- richcollins 17y agoI didn't make that assumption at all. I assumed that we will get less value for our money the less competition and more regulation that there is. Current regulation already keeps us far from receiving optimal value for our money.
- anonjon 17y agoYour assumption is wrong, as clearly indicated by the data. Countries with less competition and more regulation at least appear to receive closer to optimal value from their money (in the realm of healthcare). Healthcare doesn't make sense when viewed as a market economy. First off, there is a potentially infinite demand for healthcare. (How much will you pay to live a little longer? As death approaches, the amount you will pay can be seen as an asymptote towards infinity. You have to be a particularly well balanced individual for this not to happen.) Competing for actual finite resources (hospital beds, doctors, nurses, medications, the drafty-but-fashionable hospital-johnny), with a number of people who are going to die anyway, but are willing (if not able) to pay non-finite sums of money, clearly points us towards a conflict. The only conclusion is for the price of the finite resources to increase indefinitely.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]