3. Health care cost vs value
Americans demand quality, cutting-edge health care, medicines, medical care, medical specialists, the latest technology, and advanced facilities -- and we get them.
People from all over the world flock to the United States for their medical treatments, including citizens of Canada, Great Britain, and the rest of Europe. Why? And why not the other way round?
Well, no mandatory central planning waiting lists or care rationing, for one thing. But also because our systems, medical specialists, patient-to-treatment ratio, and technology are, quite simply, outstanding.
Here's an example: The entire Commonwealth of Canada now has but 151 magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) facilities. Just within New York State alone, there are more than 200.
Value for the cost
However, such an advanced national health and medical system comes with a cost.
Everyone who shops looks for value -- bargains. We want high quality for the lowest price. And in a country where we complain about a $20 co-pay, it is difficult at first glance to rationalize why costs have risen, and why health care seems expensive.
For example, in 1950, the average American spent $500 on health care (in 2006 dollars), and health care accounted for only 5 percent of GDP. In 2006, costs rose to $7,026 per person, and accounted for nearly 16 percent of GDP.
It is therefore easy to understand why Americans are complaining about doctors' bills -- until we do a little comparative analysis:
Comparatively speaking
A typical American family spends just 5.4 percent of its annual income on health care.
Compare this with that same family spending 40.8 percent on housing, 18.3 percent on transportation, and 18.2 percent on food. The nearest comparable expense for families is the 4.5 percent of income spent on clothing.
We don't like to believe (and politicians don't want us to believe) that medicine isn't subject to the same laws of economics as other things we buy, like cars.
We'll pay $30,000 or more for an automobile or boat, but when it comes to paying for health care, we complain that it's too expensive.
Those of you reading this who have battled long-term illness or traumatic injury to stay alive understand cost versus value. What do we get for the money, and is saving your life worth it?
Today -- and contrary to expedient political myth -- the average American has little trouble accessing a medical system that is saving lives and increasing our quality of life in so many ways, ways unthinkable in 1950, 1970, or even 1990. It's important to keep cost versus value in perspective.
The producers will pay
Economics tells us that sunshine is free (until Congress gets hold of it), but just about everything else has a cost. Health care requires some mechanism for matching limited supply with potentially unlimited demand.
And even when wrong-headed pundits decree health care to be a "right," someone pays. And when a service isn't adjusted by free market prices, then that mechanism must be rationing or the entire system fails.
That is Government-run Health Care Rationing, a reality readily confirmed by people now living under such systems.
Health care quality, quantity, and choice are by necessity limited or eliminated under such systems. Yet we have been incessantly and falsely bombarded with the myth that our system is no better than those of other advanced nations.
And, absurdly, no better than even Third-World nations.
Access to a waiting list is not access to health care. The B2J family knows this personally after losing our 36-year-old Canadian sister-in-law to a seven-month waiting list for brain tumor treatment.
And it is not just treatment rationing that hastens the deaths of the ill and the elderly. Socialized systems ration drugs and services across the whole range of medical care, delaying or limiting access to physicians, specialists, surgery, and technology-intensive procedures.
That is the way it must and will be, because only 60 percent of Americans pay taxes, and you can only squeeze the producers so much before you break them.
Recap
The B2J planned on providing you with a series of articles which examined our health care system, including access, affordability, insurance, drugs, care, costs, and choice. But time and knowledge are key factors in allowing a professional to carry on.
In the next post, you will have access to The Top Ten Myths of American Health Care by Sally C. Pipes, an eye-opening book that is must-reading for every citizen concerned about Government-run Health Care Rationing.
In her book, Ms. Pipes details, in dollars and cents, every aspect of our health care system -- and offers viable, common-sense, free-market alternatives to socialism.
As always, links to the proposed legislation and all of the articles in this series are available to you now, right at the top of this site's home page. You can also find links to your Senators, Representatives, and Downsize DC -- and they will stay there all this month.
Help end the statist ambition to eliminate our individual control over our own lives and the welfare of our families.
Hype and Chains.
Next: 4. The Top Ten Myths of American Health Care