Economy had a great year, but why no new jobs?
The growth in the economy was accompanied by fewer jobs and a drop in household earnings. Why? Because healthcare cost increases took one-quarter of the increase in GDP.This is absolutely not scalable. We already spend twice what citizens pay in other countries, yet we don't live as long as Cubans.
Bush's solution? Essentially, his solution is to do away with employer-provided health insurance. Apparently, the fact that 50% of bankruptcies are already caused by health care costs are not sufficient evidence that uninsured individuals can't afford it.
The authors of the Boston University study repeat our perennial mistake: "Yes, universal, single-payer health care is the solution that has worked in every other country, but it won't work here because we're incrementalists."
posted by Lumberjack @ 7:59 AM
1 Comments:
There are two salient comments in this article, IMHO:
First:
"That limits the ability of the nation's families, employers and government to pay for education, housing, new machinery … cleaning the environment, improving criminal justice, vacations or anything else they might hope to afford."
Second:
"The report also found that U.S. health spending per person is twice the average of such spending in Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Britain — countries that guarantee healthcare for all their citizens. "Current U.S. spending should be adequate to cover all Americans," it said."
While people are either working their collective butts off trying to fund their healthcare, or dying/being sickly because they can't get healthcare, we will not have the time or energy to protect educational choice, environment, etc. Than BushCo's cronies will have free reign to rape the environment for financial gain.
I mean, who cares if we destroy ANWR, pristine forests, salmon habitat, diverse other natural resources, and allow mining/logging/etc. in our national parks...pretty soon few of us will be able to afford visiting these places anyway, right? Geeesh....
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