At $2,604 per capita, US government spending was the highest of any nation - including those with national health insurance.

There’s a reason for that, that no one is discussing here. The US has the most inefficient adversarially-based jackpot tort system in the world, and we use it an awful lot to sue everything connected to health care.

A heck of a lot of that annual spending goes toward malpractice insurance. settling lawsuits, attorneys on the hospital payroll, defensive medicine, suits against drug companies, etc (almost every popular drug on the market gets sued), you get the idea. Nursing homes are another cash cow for attorneys as well, if you count those as part of overall health care sosts (some studies do include nursing homes, and some don’t which can really skew the results).

Back in 2005, I did a couple of long posts on this subject you might be interested in.

http://cernigsnewshog.blogspot.com/2005/02/great-divide-part-one.html

Medical research and development happens all over the world. It’s funded primarily by governments. Recent advances in stem-cell research are one of the most prominent examples of this. Another is the Pasteur Institute (government-funded) in France that discovered HIV in 1983.

Industry figures actually show that privatised medicine and the big companies that profit so hugely off it are the free riders, seeking profit from research funded by taxpayers by stepping in, buying and patenting innovations made using public grant money.

In actual fact, US Government expenditures accounted for 59.8% of total U.S. health care costs in 1999, according to a Harvard Medical School study published in the journal Health Affairs. At $2,604 per capita, US government spending was the highest of any nation - including those with national health insurance. Indeed, government health spending in the U.S. exceeded total health spending (government plus private) in every other country except Switzerland. (Estimated total U.S. health spending for 2002 was $5,427 per capita, with government’s share being $3,245.)

Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, a study author and an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard, noted: “We pay the world’s highest health care taxes. But much of the money is squandered. The wealthy get tax breaks. And HMOs and drug companies pocket billions in profits at the taxpayers’ expense. But politicians claim we can’t afford universal coverage. Every other developed nation has national health insurance. We already pay for it, but we don’t get it.”

Dr. David Himmelstein, study co-author and a co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Program, commented: “Our study shows that universal coverage is affordable - without a big tax increase. Government already spends nearly enough, but its spending it wrong. ”

Regards, C

on 10 Oct 2007 at 8:55 pm18 Chris
I’d like to point out something else (related to my last comment) as far as the issues are concerned.

Shouldn’t the so-called conservatives be fighting to end government grants for research to pharmaceutical companies?

Like stem cell research?

Do you really assume that, Michael, or were you answering the second question? Because I fail to see the linkage. I think the answer to the second question is debateable–a matter of how much in the way of resources is put into research and in what fashion, not the structure of the payments system.

Also, and this has to be pointed out, I’m a conservative in the Netherlands so I tend to oppose all change or to at least remind people that caution is wise.

Why do you assume that the position the US holds as the leading innovater in the medical field is somehow based on, and dependent on the fact that 15% or so of the population lacks health insurance?

Do you really think that guaranteeing universal coverage must inevitably destroy the ability of the American medical community to innovate?