Principles

Our November speaker was Dr. Terry S. Weiner, Union College Professor of Comparative Social Analysis (yes, this is an actual job – modern times!), whose talk was entitled “The Coming Collapse of American Health Care.”
He was not actually predicting the end of health care. But he did start by noting that since 1960, health costs have gone from 5% of GDP to 16% of (a much higher) GDP; while forty-odd million Americans are uninsured and get inferior ad hoc care; and the nation as a whole is not healthier or longer-lived than others that spend much less per person on health care. And he explained in depth how the existing system (if it can even be called one, it’s really a lack of a system) satisfies no relevant constituency (except perhaps for insurance companies) – not doctors, not hospitals, not patients, not businesses, and not governmental bodies. Doctors and hospitals are squeezed by an insurance system which wants them to do more for less. Governments and businesses are beset by rising outlays. And while most Americans may feel satisfied with their care (though it may not really be as good as they think), there is a widespread consensus that something is seriously out of whack and must change.
The most potent force for reform, the speaker said, is the American business community, for which rising health costs are a ballooning problem. Our businesses have to recover those costs in the prices for their products, whereas their competitors in other countries, where government picks up the tab, don’t have to concern themselves with health costs at all. Thus, the price of a US-made car must reflect about $2000 for employee health costs, whereas that number, for a European-made car, is zero.
Dr. Weiner suggested that the problem with American liberals is that they tend to make the perfect the enemy of the good. Here, the attachment to a utopian health care agenda has undermined the prospects for more modest but positive reform. Presidential candidates, he noted, have been touting health care plans that will supposedly cover everyone without increasing the costs – an impossibility. And, Weiner said, a “single-payer” (i.e., government-run) health care system won’t fly politically in America. That would require, in essence, sacrificing some freedom for the sake of equality; and whereas Europeans are willing to do this (hence their single-payer schemes), Americans ultimately value freedom more than equality, and won’t embrace that trade-off.
Dr. Weiner saw health care reform as a project of stages. Pragmatically, the next stage, he said, should be to somehow get everyone (or at least most of the uninsured) “under the tent” of coverage. This would have to entail some sort of “tiered” system which, while providing some basic level of care for the needy, would also allow others the freedom to opt for higher levels of service. That would still, admittedly, raise even further the overall amount the nation spends on health care; but, in so doing, it would increase the pressure for the next stage, of tackling costs.
It was calculated that the rich, yummy refreshments served at the meeting increased the average attendee’s cholesterol count by .0036 points, and would, in the course of time, add .000000000012% to the nation’s health care cost burden. Surely, the straw that will break the camel’s back.

U.S. Healthcare- The Coming Colapse!