Health care reform needs a
shot in the arm
In June Toyota announced it would be putting its RAV4 mini-SUV
plant in Ontario, Canada, rather than in the United States.
The education level
of its potential workforce was one reason Toyota cited for locating in Ontario,
which has surpassed Michigan in vehicle production.
But the other selling point
was Canada’s national health insurance system.
“Pundits tell us the welfare state is doomed by globalization, that programs like national health insurance have become unsustainable,” columnist Paul Krugman wrote in the New York Times. “But Canada’s universal health insurance system is handling international competition just fine. It’s our own system, which penalizes companies that treat their workers well, that’s in trouble.”
The difference in health care costs is having a significant impact on corporate investment decisions within a highly competitive global market.
Every other major economic power in the world has converted to some form of publicly financed health care insurance, except the United States. Other nations have done so partly because they have made a policy decision that health care is a right – not a privilege – but also because national health care is good for the economy.
Staying committed to a patchwork public-private health care system has left Americans with poorer public health and poorer economic well-being.
U.S. auto manufacturers pay about $1,500 per vehicle for health care coverage. In Canada, with its publicly financed single-payer insurance system, health care costs per vehicle are $120.
The U.S. health care system is first in the world in just one category: cost. No nation pays more for health care and gets less in return than we do.
In 2003, the most recent figures available, health care spending per person in the United States was $5,635. The next highest country was Norway whose costs were $3,807. The Canadian single-payer health care system spent $3,003 per person.
And what do we get for our increased spending?
While health care spending takes 15 percent of our gross domestic product – compared to an average of 8.6 percent for the top 30 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) nations – our infant mortality rate is 37th and life expectancy ranks 29th.
Compared with the United States, life expectancy is three years greater in Canada and six years greater in Japan.
“The United States has fewer physicians, nurses and hospital beds per person, and fewer MRI and CT scanners than the OECD average,” according to labor journalist Holly Sklar.
So where do our health care dollars go if they’re not going toward keeping us healthy? Following the money is easy.
Private insurers take anywhere from 13 percent to 30 percent of premium dollars for overhead and profit, while administrative costs for Medicare are less than 2 percent.
Processing forms for hundreds of different insurance policies, excessive insurance industry and prescription drug profits, advertising to convince consumers to buy one brand of insurance or drug over another and huge executive salaries consume gigantic amounts of dollars that could be better spent on actual health care.
