We require to change the rewards of the entire system, not just health care, however if we do not begin with healthcare, that financial cancer will drag us into national insolvency all by itself.
American Health care is a growth industry in the same method cancer is a growth industry: both keep growing until they kill the host, which when it comes to health care is the U.S. economy.
While a terrific many people in the system appreciate improving the health of their patients, the healthcare system itself just appreciates one thing: maximizing profits by any methods offered, consisting of sending out numerous patients to an early grave by means of medications which corporations declared “safe” and rigged the political-regulatory-research systems to comply.
I call this making the most of earnings by any means offered system sickcare, for obvious reasons: this system earnings by managing sickness, i.e. chronic diseases, instead of dealing with the causes, which in a lot of chronic conditions trace back to lifestyle: SAD (standard American diet plan), bad physical fitness and a generally unhealthy way of life of convenience (i.e. inactive), heavy work/financial stress and dependencies to medications, drugs, social media, and so on
. Sickcare’s single-minded profiteering would be bad enough if we might afford its spiraling ever higher cost, but we can not: as I noted way back in 2011, Sickcare Will Bankrupt the Nation all by itself. three years ago I noted that U.S. Healthcare Isn’t Broken– It’s Fixed (5/26/18), as generic meds that cost $22.60 for a month’s supply are pressed by Huge Pharma as branded medications for $1,120 each month. Such a deal!
I’ve been talking about work just recently, and one of my customers explained the immensely negative impact sickcare expenses have on employment. I covered the incredibly negative impact of soaring sickcare insurance expenses on small business back in 2011: Here’s Why Small Business Isn’t Working With, and Will not be Employing (7/11/11), but the exact same soaring-costs dynamic makes Corporate America unwilling to hire anyone in America, too.
You ‘d need to be ridiculous to choose America as your worldwide base, provided the grossly unbalanced expense of healthcare in the U.S. compared to our developed-world rivals in Europe and East Asia (Japan and South Korea). Unfortunately, the treatment for your insanity will be so costly in America that your psychiatric problems will quickly be exacerbated by monetary mess up.
Those with heavily subsidized healthcare insurance coverage may not recognize that insurance coverage for a household can cost more than a wage earner’s entire monthly earnings. This generates a perverse reward (from the viewpoint of a healthy economy, rather than a corrupt, rigged economy run for the unique benefit of profiteers, scammers, speculators and political fixers) for one partner to stop their jobs or cut their hours to minimize the household earnings to the point that federal subsidies (ObamaCare) begin and pay much or most of the remarkably costly sickcare insurance coverage tab.
The subsidies are obviously ultimately paid by the taxpayers; sickcare profiteers thank you.
Needless to state, employers facing monthly healthcare insurance coverage costs of $1,500 for a worker earning $2,500 will be looking for automation or abroad alternatives. How can the company pay for to keep paying healthcare insurance coverage costs that spiral far above the Consumer Price Index (CPI)? Ultimately these higher expenses come out of the worker’s paycheck, as companies could have provided raises but instead had to hand over all the dough to the sickcare profiteers.
One motorist of wages’ ever-declining share of the nationwide earnings is trillions of dollars have been siphoned off by sickcare. As the contrast chart below programs, the U.S. pays roughly $5,000 more per capita (per individual) per year for health care than other equally developed countries: the U.S. pays $10,966 per person each year and the average paid by other developed countries pay roughly half: $5,697 per person each year.
330 million Americans X $5,000 is $1.65 trillion a year. No wonder earnings have gone no place for decades and corporations could not wait to overseas tasks in America. (Not that the Corporate America required much more of a reward to offshore U.S. jobs, but let’s recognize that sickcare costs put American business at a big worldwide downside.)
Please analyze the chart below of health care expenses per capita (per person) in the U.S. from 2000 to 2018 (the in 2015 offered on the St. Louis Federal Reserve database). I’ve marked up the chart to indicate where healthcare expenses per capita would be if healthcare had tracked the Customer Price Index (CPI) for the past twenty years.
Noticeably, the expense had U.S. health care increased by the exact same portion as whatever else–$5,852 per capita per year– is extremely close to the average costs in comparable developed nations: $5,697 per capita annually. Rather, U.S. health care costs per person were $9,000 annually since 2018.
The 3rd chart shows that the results of this asymmetric expenditure on health hasn’t done much in regards to life span or other broad procedures of national health and wellness. America is Top in expenses however far down the list of life expectancy and other procedures of well-being.
The human and monetary costs of this ill system are pervasive. Those attempting to offer care within the sickcare system’s perverse incentives are stressing out (see last chart), and services are squashed by ever-higher expenses for whatever related to health care. The “service” for companies is to push more of the ridiculous cost increases onto staff members, who are already staggering under the weight of stagnant incomes and skyrocketing inflation in sectors aside from health care.
Small company entrepreneurs end up not working with any employees since they can’t pay for to provide the mandated health care. Having to do all the work required to keep the business afloat stresses out the owners and they close business, to the detriment of their community and the city government, which loses the tax profits created by the enterprise.
Here’s a real-world example of how healthcare has actually ended up being unaffordable for companies: in the mid-1980s I could purchase detailed healthcare insurance coverage for my single workers (primarily young) for 6 hours’ pay for the average employee and 4 hours of my pay. (My partner and I paid all the healthcare insurance expenses, the employees paid absolutely no, I’m just using the hours and pay as a means of measuring the cost of health care in regards to the purchasing power of salaries.)
Can an employer buy equivalent detailed healthcare insurance coverage today for 6 hours’ of the workers’ pay? No, not even close. (Note that I’m talking about real insurance, not fake simulacra of insurance, i.e. catastrophic coverage.)
Sickcare is a win for the sickcare profiteers and a loss for companies, employees, communities, federal government and the nation. Like cancer, sickcare will keep growing till it kills the host. We’re getting close.
Sickcare is the knife in the heart of employment. Sickcare puts the country at a remarkable competitive drawback, squashes small companies and generates perverse rewards to automate and offshore jobs just to go out from below the dead weight of ever-higher sickcare costs.
We need a whole brand-new method to health care that consists of every aspect of American culture, society, education, economics and governance. We require to ditch SAD (standard American diet) and our unhealthy lifestyle, and incentivize improving health from the ground up instead of generating chronic lifestyle diseases such as metabolic disorders and then managing these conditions as a way of making the most of earnings. The national goal ought to not be profiting from an over-medicated populace, it ought to be removing the requirement for medications. (A healthy person has no requirement for handfuls of medications.) Rather than benefit from 74% of the people being obese and 40% being obese, the national goal ought to be to get rid of way of life illness completely by changing behaviors and rewards, not pricey treatments and medications. That would release healthcare to serve those struggling with non-lifestyle illness.
As Charlie Munger notoriously noted, “”Program me the incentive and I will reveal you the result.” That’s how humans run: we respond to the rewards presented, even if they reduce the health of the population and bankrupt the nation. We need to change the rewards of the entire system, not simply healthcare, but if we don’t begin with health care, that financial cancer will drag us into national insolvency all by itself.
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