We Don't Spend Enough on Health Care (Obama is choosing money over life)

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By CRAIG S. KARPEL

Americans are being urged to worry about the nation spending 17% of its gross domestic product each year on health care—a higher percentage than any other country. Addressing the American Medical Association in June, Barack Obama said, "Make no mistake: The cost of our health care is a threat to our economy." But the president is mistaken. Japan spends 8% of its GDP on health care—the same as Zimbabwe. South Korea and Haiti both spend 6%. Monaco spends 5%, which is what Afghanistan spends. Do all of these countries have economies that are less "threatened" than that of the U.S.?

No. So there must be other factors that affect the health of a nation's economy.

Mr. Obama has said that "the cost of health care has weighed down our economy." No one thinks the 20% of our GDP that's attributable to manufacturing is weighing down the economy, because it's intuitively clear that one person's expenditure on widgets is another person's income. But the same is true of the health-care industry. The $2.4 trillion Americans spend each year for health care doesn't go up in smoke. It's paid to other Americans.

The basic material needs of human beings are food, clothing and shelter.

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Once these material needs are substantially met, desire for health care—without which there can be no enjoyment of food, clothing or shelter—becomes a significant, perhaps a principal, driver of the economy.

A little-noticed feature of the current recession is the role of the health-care industry as a resilient driver of the general economy. Health-care now accounts for 10.4% of nonfarm employment. Health-care employment grew by 19,600 jobs in July 2009, on a par with the average monthly gain for the first half of 2009, which was down from an average monthly increase of 30,000 in 2008. Remarkably, these gains occurred in a period during which total employment shrank by 6.7 million.

The U.S. health-care economy should be viewed not as a burden but as an engine of growth. Medical and orthopedic equipment exports increased by 65.1% from 2004 through 2008. Pharmaceutical exports were up 74.6%. The unprecedented advances expected to come out of American stem cell, nanotechnology and human genome research—which other countries' constricted health sectors cannot support—will send these already impressive figures skyward.

A study by Deloitte LLP has found that more than 400,000 non-U.S. residents obtained medical care in the U.S. in 2008, and it forecasts an annual increase of 3%. Some 3.5% of inpatient procedures at U.S. hospitals were performed on international patients, many of them escaping from Canada's supposedly superior health system.

"Inbound medical tourism," Deloitte stated, "is primarily driven by the search for high-quality care without extensive waiting periods. Foreign patients are willing to pay more for care within the United States if these two factors play a large role." The deficiencies of the foreign health-care systems the Obama administration wishes to emulate can be counted on to generate ever-increasing revenues for U.S. providers and employment for Americans.

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The administration's health-care plan is biased toward bean-counting rather than designed to maximize American physical and mental well-being.

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Confronted for the first time in history with a constant stream of medical innovations that are marvelously effective but tend to be very expensive, our legislative representatives—in particular, the Blue Dog Democrats—would do well to stop "thinking it over" and to commit themselves to action that will preserve the ability of Americans to choose life over money.

Mr. Karpel is the author of "The Retirement Myth" (HarperCollins, 1995).

http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB100...0610869756.html

[NickD 203]

Forget about shelter, if you don't fork over your extremely unreasonable property taxes, kick you out in the street and sell your home off for taxes. An easy way for a politician or the sheriff to make a couple of extra bucks off of your hard work.

Was on the news yesterday that Obama did kick out the idea of a government owned health agency, am for that, I hate dealing with our government and that includes any phase of it. Just about any idiot you meet that works for the government thinks, they are some kind of god without the slightest inclination that it is your buck that is paying their salaries. Would really hate to deal with that where my health is at stake.

With the APA had problems with my bank that I dealt with for years adding my wife to my checking account, I can guarantee you, it was not a 25 million dollar account. Just went to another bank, they said, all we have to do is to get on the computer and verify that my wife was not on the FBI sh!t list, took a couple of seconds and said she was fine to join a new account with both of us. Least we had a choice, you don't have any kind of choice when dealing with the government.

We should go back to organized crime, they never twisted your arm to go into a place to get screwed. Feel all these guys now are running our country where they can twist your arm.

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bttt

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

Boots won't do it. I need my hip waders here.

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

Boots won't do it. I need my hip waders here.

Can you rebut this?

No one thinks the 20% of our GDP that's attributable to manufacturing is weighing down the economy, because it's intuitively clear that one person's expenditure on widgets is another person's income. But the same is true of the health-care industry. The $2.4 trillion Americans spend each year for health care doesn't go up in smoke. It's paid to other Americans.

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

Boots won't do it. I need my hip waders here.

Can you rebut this?

No one thinks the 20% of our GDP that's attributable to manufacturing is weighing down the economy, because it's intuitively clear that one person's expenditure on widgets is another person's income. But the same is true of the health-care industry. The $2.4 trillion Americans spend each year for health care doesn't go up in smoke. It's paid to other Americans.

Who is putting 20% of the GDP into manufacting, and how is that even relative to healthcare spending? How are you accounting for the overlap in manufacturing for the healthcare industry? Apples and oranges, as far as I can tell, and I am just too lazy to read the full article, or even what you posted originally.