Friday, April 15, 2005
Krugman: The Medical Money Pit
New York Times columnist Paul Krugman explains US Health Care:
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The Medical Money Pit
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: April 15, 2005
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In 2002, the latest year for which comparable data are available, the United States spent $5,267 on health care for each man, woman and child in the population. Of this, $2,364, or 45 percent, was government spending, mainly on Medicare and Medicaid. Canada spent $2,931 per person, of which $2,048 came from the government. France spent $2,736 per person, of which $2,080 was government spending.
Amazing, isn't it? U.S. health care is so expensive that our government spends more on health care than the governments of other advanced countries, even though the private sector pays a far higher share of the bills than anywhere else.
As always, click on the article's title to read Mr. Krugman's full article.
I just can't help thinking revamping US health care would be a great populist issue for Democrats. Demonizing Big Insurance companies should be much easier than demonizing, say, labor unions - and think of the long term political impact of drastically cutting the Insurance Company money machine's campaign donations and PR spending...
Yeah, it's a 20 year project - so shouldn't we get started?
