Why would we do this to ourselves? Mainly, I think, because the pending health care legislation still defies adequate understanding. New costs are showing up daily. Nancy Pelosi was right: we had to pass the bloated bill so people could read it; once it was passed and we did read it, fewer and fewer people wanted it.
With this bill, 80% of the country will, with certainty, die sooner and poorer than they would otherwise. How can that be so?
From 100% of the population, we must subtract the 10% who are among the poorest, and therefore stand to benefit from this legislation, and the 10% who are among the richest who can afford to pay whatever it costs for health care. According to the Federal Reserve Board, the wealthiest 10% of the US population owns 71% of the nation’s wealth (even the wealthiest 10% will die marginally poorer because of their support for the poorest 10%… it just won’t be enough to matter).
The remaining 80% of middle wage earners will pay their share of the added costs of Obama-Care and will therefore die poorer AND they will receive less medical care (because of cuts in Medicare) when they reach old age … and will therefore die sooner.
If the US health care system was reformed in a proper way, incrementally, with successes along the way, the 90% of the country being asked to pay more would happily (for the most part) support the 10% less fortunate, but the current plan will likely wreck health care as most of us have known it in the US.
Curiously, the matter of longevity has not received the coverage it deserves in the health debate. The Center for Disease Control’s National Center for Health Statistics says, “A child born in the United States in 2005 can expect to live nearly 78 years (77.9)”. This prediction is made, of course, on the assumption that health care trends will continue in the future as they have in the recent past … which is not at all the case under Obama-Care.
We know, for example, that the federal budget for Medicare will be cut drastically which will result in rationing of care for people on Medicare. Some experts anticipate chronic shortages of top medical personnel as fees are set by the government. New rules are expected that may restrict the freedom to seek the best possible health care. Therefore, those eligible for Medicare, especially those among the 90% who have, or will have, Medicare today will, on average, die sooner…. even without “death panels”.
It should be no surprise to younger people among the 90% that they, too, will die sooner and poorer because they will be paying for Obama-Care, and will be subject to Medicare-like rules when they become seriously ill after age 65; they will, on average, not reach their currently-expected age of 76 (for males, 82 for females), thus ending a long upward trend in longevity for every American, male and female, regardless of race.
Race and gender are important and complicating factors in the above calculations, assumptions and conclusions. The US Census Bureau says the median personal income of white/European males was $31,000 in 2004, versus only $23,000 for Black/African Americans. A disproportionately larger-than-pro-rata share of the 10% on subsidized medical care will therefore be African American (and Hispanic, though no comparable figures could be found for Hispanics; interestingly, white and black women have almost the same median personal income, doubtless the result of a larger percentage of working black females).
Since a disproportionately large share of the poorest 10% in America are black or Hispanic, one might conclude that African Americans and Hispanics will therefore benefit disproportionately from Obama-Care, both in terms of wealth and longevity. This would be true in an ideal world. I believe such a conclusion would be false, however. Government-run health care will quickly result in a decline in overall health care for everyone, just as it does in every large country in which it has been tried (I’ve wondered why no one in power seems to have looked at Germany’s rather successful hybrid government/private system).
To paraphrase France’s Marquis de Custine when he visited Russia in 1839, “If you become ill in Russia, you should be immediately taken to France”; this statement is unfortunately still true today in Russia where they have a single provider system, with a state-of-the-art funnel & rubber-tube stomach pump beside every bed, and the average male life expectancy has dropped substantially to 59 – unless the Russian is a high level public official or wealthy business leader in which case he or she will obtain top quality, modern health care wherever it can be found (Could the US possibly be headed in that direction)?
The inevitable surge in corruption, which exists in large government-funded social programs almost anywhere in the world, will make current levels of fraud and abuse pale in comparison with the corruption that will erupt under Obama-Care. More corruption means it is virtually assured that white/European and Asian Americans will pay mightily to subsidize the poor, mostly African American and Hispanic, and will die sooner than the actuaries are currently predicting.
The double accounting for hundreds of billions of dollars, announced reluctantly by the US Secretary of Health, plus “shadow” costs here and there, just one of which is on the order of $103 billion, guarantees the redistribution of a lot of wealth, but maybe not so much health.
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