US Has Health Greed, Not Health Care!

The New York Times ponders “The New Health Care, a Medical Mystery: Something Happened to U.S. Health Spending After 1980
The spending began soaring beyond that of other advanced nations, but without the same benefits in life expectancy. [By Austin Frakt, May 14, 2018.]
The United States devotes a lot more of its economic resources to health care than any other nation, and yet its health care outcomes aren’t better for it.

That hasn’t always been the case. America was in the realm of other countries in per-capita health spending through about 1980. Then it diverged.

It’s the same story with health spending as a fraction of gross domestic product. Likewise, life expectancy. In 1980, the U.S. was right in the middle of the pack of peer nations in life expectancy at birth. But by the mid-2000s, we were at the bottom of the pack.

What happened?”

What happened is that Reagan became president in 1980. President Greed.

The more greed one has, the shorter the life, the sweeter, both for victims and perpetrators…

Other nations have health care: the mission of doctors, nurses and supporting medical staff, in these nations is to optimize health of the citizens. However, in the USA, starting with the presidency of Reagan, greed came to be viewed as the best motivation for everything. Reagan himself, as governor of California had made it sure it would be so, in a breakthrough case: Reagan forced the University of California to charge for education. Initially the University was public, that is 100% publicly financed and 100% free for qualified Californian students. Reagan made sure only the wealthy could attend, in the long run: now only 13% of the University of California financing is from the state.

The greed modelization of everything, in the modern US, enforcing the principle that only the wealthy can pretend to full human rights, be it education or health, has been extended to the entire society. “Your Money Or Your Life!” works best when people are dying, or in pain!

The propaganda of the powers that be, the propaganda of the power of greed, is incredibly deep. It’s a programmation not just of ideas and systems of ideas. It is a programmation of feelings, emotions, occupations. A programmation of moods and inclinations. A programmation of souls and hearts!

We the People of the US has not understood that we are confronting the formation of a new aristocracy, the aristocracy of wealth. Some individuals, famous and esteemed, in the US, have made billions of profit in health care. One year, a hopital executive made half a billion.

Want to improve US health care? It’s time to understand that greed is antagonistic to care.

Patrice Ayme

Note: My preceding observations are supported by the NYT as follows:

.…”differences in public policy on health care financing. “Other countries have been able to put limits on health care prices and spending” with government policies, said Paul Starr, professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton. The United States has relied more on market forces, which have been less effective.

“Confronted with fiscal pressures, as the share of G.D.P. absorbed by health care spending began to get serious, other nations had mechanisms to hold down spending,” said Henry Aaron, a health economist with the Brookings Institution. “We didn’t.”

One result: Prices for health care goods and services are much higher in the United States. Gerard Anderson, a professor at Johns Hopkins and a lead author of a Health Affairs study on the subject, emphasized this point. “The differential between what the U.S. and other industrialized countries pay for prescriptions and for hospital and physician services continues to widen over time,” he said…

According to a recent study, the United States has higher health care administrative costs than other wealthy countries.

“We have big pharma vs. big insurance vs. big hospital networks, and the patient and employers and also the government end up paying the bills,” said Janet Currie, a Princeton health economist. Though we have some large public health care programs, they are not able to keep a lid on prices. Medicare, for example, is forbidden to negotiate as a whole for drug prices, as Ms. Currie pointed out.

But none of this explains the timing of the spending divergence. Why did it start around 1980?”

Interestingly, the NYT doesn’t point at Reagan directly… although it does, indirectly, by saying the USA started to spend less on social services… that would include Reagan getting the crazies out of mental hospitals, and into the streets… although the NYT, once again, doesn’t say it… Instead it points out the lag in social spending of the USA with rich countries went from 4% GDP, to 6% GDP…

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Tags: health care., Health Greed, Reagan, US