He has a friend who is so very excited about last week's events, and shared a link the to BBC's announcement.
It has a nifty chart embedded, showing the growth in medical costs in the US, and then comparing them to other nations' stats. Very nifty, very informative, very seducing to someone who doesn't have a grasp of history.
(You'll have to hit the link to see it, it won't lift out directly.)
It shows health care spending (and inflation) on a moon shot since about 1970. Things happen for a reason. So, what happened shortly before the moon shot?
Well, Lyndon Johnson, that paragon of statesmanship, signed a bill into law establishing Medicare, promising it wouldn't cost very much, and that it would save us money over time. At about the same time, Medicaid was mandated at the state level, with the same promises. Anyone who objected was heartless and stupid. Lawyers discovered that there was money to be made in medical malpractice litigation. The doctors' insurers started charging premiums to reflect the new realities. Then, as a result of deficits run up by Washington, trying to run a welfare state, a war in Vietnam, and keeping the lid on in places like Europe and Korea, there was a run on the US Treasury's gold supply. Nixon felt obliged to abandon the gold standard, and we went to a fiat currency. A general inflation, lasting for over a decade, erupted. No restraints ever were placed upon either government spending or medical litigation. Inflation abated in other sectors, never in the health-care sector, because that part of the economy was now effectively under the sway of Congresses and White Houses, all looking toward the next election.
Moon shot!!
Of course, none of that info is in the BBC chart.
Here's another chart, courtesy of Karl Denninger:
Another, more serious moon shot. And, in reality, the first one helped in great part create the second.
My Facebook friend is young and idealistic. He would have loved last week's pep rally at George Mason University. He's not old enough to understand the tragic inevitability of the math that awaits him in his lifetime, and that of the children he hopes to raise. He can't, he's not old enough.
He can't connect the dots between this generation's expansions of spending and entitlements, and the moon shot to come.
Sadly, the dots will connect for him and his children.
2 comments:
Childbirth is the number one reason for hospitalization in the United States, with postpartum mothers and newborn infants making up about one of every four patients, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. Women of childbearing age make up more than a quarter of all uninsured Americans, and Medicaid -- a federally funded program that pays for health care for those with low incomes -- covers more than 40% of about 4 million annual American births.
- 40% of all births, that strikes me as a lot. Perhaps they shouldn't have children they can not afford on their own???
blah, blah, blah, etc. keep reading
....
These costs have risen dramatically. In the late 1980s, the average cost for a hospital birth was about $4,000; by the late 1990s, it had risen to $5,500, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.
http://healthinsurance.about.com/lw/Health-Medicine/Womens-Health/Pregnancy-Health-Coverage-How-Much-of-My-Pregnancy-Costs-Will-My-Insurance-Cover-.htm
The societal shift is well entrenched.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/13/health/13mothers.html
4 out of 10 births are to unwed mothers. No real surprise that 40%of all births in America are covered by Medicaid - not to my mind anyway. I have my doubts about all the hooh-hah that is put out on tv about all these single women birthing babies who have everything under control and good jobs with killer paychecks and you know, the whole Malibu Barbi package - like that show Accidentally on Purpose. So the kid is born into the world using a Medicaid program, goes to public school, maybe is housed in public housing, then heads off to college using a student loan with Uncle Sam bucks, gets out, buys his first house (maybe) with a mortgage from a GSE that is by this time wholly owned by Uncle Sam. Slowly but surely, we really are turning into a nation of individuals who are beholden to Uncle Sam from cradle to grave.
Jeff
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