President Obama filled up close to 90 minutes of TV airtime giving his 3rd State of the Union Address last week. With 6,953 words (about 12 pages) to choose from political pundits filled the airwaves all across the country with animated reactions commenting on everything from the details of his plans to his tone, his demeanor, and overall performance. But all too often we forget that with great orators, it is more important to focus on the words that were not said than the ones that were….
Here are the facts:
– “Health” was used only 7 times during his speech (roughly 0.001% which takes up less than 1 line on a page).
– His comments regarding Healthcare made up only 332 words. That represented 4.7% of his speech (about a page and half). A little better but still severely lacking in substance.
How can that be?
– Health expenditures in this country represent more than 16% of our GDP while the average percentage among high income nations is roughly 10%.
– 13.1 million Americans lack a job but more than 50 million Americans in this country lack health insurance. Doesn’t healthcare deserve more attention?
– Since inauguration, he has spent 60% of his time in office getting what he called his #1 domestic policy agenda, healthcare reform, passed through Congress. If you recall, he entered office on January 20, 2010 and healthcare reform was passed on March 23, 2011. So 15 out of his now 25 months were dedicated to the pursuit of universal healthcare.
– Lastly, most of the popular provisions of the law have already been instituted. Millions of young adults in their twenties have been able to get insurance through their parents. And even more promising, no child under 18 can be denied coverage for pre-existing conditions.
So why were there so few words on healthcare? Discussing income inequality yet avoiding healthcare is not having an honest discussion about the problem. America spends more money on healthcare than any country on the planet. What is not widely known are the percentages spent by the government versus the private sector and how that impacts the American pocketbook. This country is actually on par with other high income nations spending 7.4% of their GDP on government health expenditures like Medicare, Medicaid, and Veteran healthcare. For a comparison, countries like France (8.7%) and Germany (8.1%) are at higher levels with government run universal healthcare. However, when it comes to expenditures from the private sector, America spends an additional 8.5% of its GDP representing almost half (52.2%) of total health costs for the entire country. That is 4 times higher than most like nations. In fact those private sector figures put us in 50th place between Rwanda (49th) and Gambia (51st) according to the World Health Organization.
WHY IT MATTERS
Most Americans get health insurance through their employer leaving American businesses on the hook for large portions of the country’s private health expenditures. It’s been the catalyst for corporations moving jobs overseas. It’s why the United States Postal Service is teetering on the edge of insolvency. It’s why America bailed out General Motors and restructured their Union contracts to be the #1 car company in the world again.
Most Americans work for businesses with 200 or more employees. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, 99% of the time these businesses are offering health insurance to those employees. The foundation goes on to highlight that the cost of these employer health plans have gone up by 113% over the past 10 years with employers paying close to 73% of those costs on behalf of their employee population. As a result they have shielded much of the exorbitant healthcare increases from their employees. This has had grave repercussions to the average American salary. You cannot talk about income inequality and ignore non-salaried benefits like health insurance. These increases have poked huge holes in the bucket of funds that corporations use to payout employee compensation. You also cannot blame health insurance companies for these increases either. Their profit margins barely surpass 4% compared to pharmaceutical companies that enjoy 15% margins. The blame really goes to the actual cost of providing healthcare.
The U.S Social Security Administration has tracked the national average wages in this country since 1951. In 2001 it was $32,921. In 2010 it is $41,673. So despite the increases in health insurance costs, wages have still gone up 27% in the past 10 years. American employees however have seen 131% growth in the amount of money they must contribute to their health plan. It has gone from $1,787 in 2001 to $4,129 in 2010. So Americans have literally went from paying 5% of their salary on health insurance to 10% in 10 years not even accounting for the increase in co-payments, deductibles, and out of pocket costs.
If you truly want to tackle income inequality, look no further than tackling the increases in healthcare spending. Healthcare reform did not go far enough on this issue. It increased access via health exchanges, protected more patients via insurance regulations like profit ceilings and mandated benefits. But it did nothing to tackle costs. Even worse, our healthcare system will continue to shield costs from the consumer by giving subsidies to lower income Americans so that insurance can be more affordable. But these subsidies are paid for by taxes and fees levied on health insurance companies ($60 billion), on Americans with rich “Cadillac” type health plans ($32 billion), on pharmaceutical companies ($27 billion), and on high income earners use of hospitals ($210 billion). The only problem with these types of revenue streams are the laws of economics. Since individual Americans and large businesses will be required by law to purchase insurance by 2014, they as consumers will be more inelastic than their suppliers. In the end most of these taxes and fees will be passed on to the most vulnerable consumers further eating away at their hard earned income.
President Obama concluded his healthcare remarks conceding that he was “willing to look at other ideas to bring down costs, including one that Republicans suggested last year — medical malpractice reform to rein in frivolous lawsuits.” The only problem is here is the sad reality. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation only 11,000 malpractice claims were paid in 2009 amounting to $3.6 billion. That sounds like a big number but it is only 0.2% of total U.S. health costs. So the only question left is how much medical malpractice reform could help to actually close the income inequality gap. Well, the average malpractice suit is only $11.99 per capita, putting $12 bucks back in everyone’s pocket. I guess the good news is this kind of policy change would help fight the common cold giving every American the extra disposable income to buy a bottle of Robitussin from CVS.
Originally posted at NYU’s Health Policy Blog
1 Man 1 Mind