HEALTH, ABSURDITY AND MATH
By Garen Yegparian

Asbarez
18/health-absurdity-and-math/
Aug 18, 2009

There are a lot of terrifying myths being floated by, mostly
Republican, extremist, bought-and-paid-for-by-insurance-companies
types about the health care reform being discussed by the
U.S. Congress. Actually, with that body being in recess, the whole
country is now engaged first-hand through the town halls being
organized by its members with their constituents.

You’ve read, heard, and seen what is going on at these gatherings. The
most extreme, or sometimes ill-informed, people, organized by
anti-reform lobbying groups are sent to disrupt these meetings. So, the
strategy of the anti-reform forces is obvious- sow fear, confusion,
and disruption- resulting in sure failure. This is much like the
Turks’ denial campaign, just plant a seed of doubt, and the dirty
deed is as good as done.

You can get all this and more elsewhere. Here, I want to present and
play with some numbers on this issue. Here goes.

The annual tab for healthcare in the U.S. is $2,500,000,000,000
(that’s two and a half trillion dollars.

We’re told the proposed plan will cost an extra $1 trillion OVER TEN
YEARS. That’s a tenth of a, or .1, trillion dollars per year. Remember,
the Bush tax cuts for the rich, earlier this decade, cost the same
trillion, and benefited very, very, very, very, very few people.

Currently, the private system in place has about 20% overhead (read
profit and avoidable paperwork).

The U.S. has 47 million uninsured people. It turns out that only 31
million would benefit from the proposals floating around. Why? The
remainder is undocumented aliens whom the plans won’t cover according
to President Obama.

So this means that for only 4% more annually (.1 trillion divided
by 2.5 trillion) we can cover 10% more of the country’s population
(31 million divided by 307.2 million, the current U.S. population
estimate). This seems like a bargain to me. In terms of real dollars,
this means a cost to the country overall of $326 per person per
year. Or, in other terms, each newly covered person costs $3226.

All these numbers seem pretty cheap to me for what we’d get in
return: far fewer emergency room visits (the most expensive kind
of medical care) by people who wait until a condition is severe
because they don’t have coverage; better overall public health since
communicable diseases would be checked and contagion would be less
likely; even the private sector benefits, since people would be able
to have coverage independently of their workplace, reducing costs
to employers/companies, many of which have problems competing with
overseas firms because the latter’s countries DO provide publicly
funded healthcare; the 20% overhead is eliminated because publicly
run programs have no need for profit, just like Medicare, which
senior citizens are largely satisfied with; this public plan would
provide competition to the private insurance that would still exist,
making the latter more efficient-after all, that’s what the moneyed
class always harangues us about, "competition breeds efficiency,
it’s the capitalist way, the market balances these things out". With
all this, no plan is perfect, this is planet Earth and its designers
are human. But, it’s better by far than the current arrangement.

So why would anyone oppose this? Simple, they either stand to
lose the boatloads of money they’re making at our expense, they’re
ill informed and misled by their chosen sources of "trustworthy"
information- Rush Limbaugh & Sarah Palin come to mind, or they’re
simply extreme ideologues.

The vast majority of the population does not fit into any of these
categories. The vast, overwhelming majority of the country’s people
would benefit from health care reform. Remember Nataline Sarkissian
(wasn’t that the result of a "death panel" provided courtesy of
the much ballyhooed private medical insurance industry?) and decide
accordingly. Then let your federal representatives know you support
the health care reform principles espoused by Obama.