Health Care and the Economy

The leftist commie mag, Business Week, has posted an article called, "What's Really Propping Up the Economy?" The gist is that most job growth in the US since 2000 has been in (or directly related to) the Health Care sector.

But the very real problems with the health-care system mask a simple fact: Without it the nation's labor market would be in a deep coma. Since 2001, 1.7 million new jobs have been added in the health-care sector, which includes related industries such as pharmaceuticals and health insurance. Meanwhile, the number of private-sector jobs outside of health care is no higher than it was five years ago.

Sure, housing has been a bonanza for homebuilders, real estate agents, and mortgage brokers. Together they have added more than 900,000 jobs since 2001. But the pressures of globalization and new technology have wreaked havoc on the rest of the labor market: Factories are still closing, retailers are shrinking, and the finance and insurance sector, outside of real estate lending and health insurers, has generated few additional jobs.

The good news:

Health care is highly labor intensive, so most of that $2 trillion ends up in the pockets of workers. And at least so far, there's little leakage abroad in terms of patient care. "Health care is all home-produced," says Princeton University economist and health-care expert Uwe Reinhardt. The good news is that if the housing market falls into a deep swoon, health care could provide enough new jobs to prevent a wider recession. In August, health-services employment rose by 35,000, double the increase in construction and far outstripping any other sector.

John Maynard Keynes would nod approvingly if he were alive. Seventy years ago, the elegant British economist proposed that in tough times the government could and should spend large sums of money to create jobs and stimulate growth. His theories are out of fashion, but substitute "health care" for "government," and that's exactly what is happening today.

The bad news:

Make no mistake, though: The U.S. could eventually pay a big economic price for all these jobs. Ballooning government spending on health care is a major reason why Washington is running an enormous budget deficit, since federal outlays for health care totaled more than $600 billion in 2005, or roughly one quarter of the whole federal budget. Rising prices for medical care are making it harder for the average American to afford health insurance, leaving 47 million uninsured.

Moreover, as the high cost of health care lowers the competitiveness of U.S. corporations, it may accelerate the outflow of jobs in a self-reinforcing cycle. In fact, one explanation for the huge U.S. trade deficit is that the country is borrowing from overseas to fund creation of health-care jobs.

There's another enormous long-term problem: If current trends continue, 30% to 40% of all new jobs created over the next 25 years will be in health care. That sort of lopsided job creation is not the blueprint for a well-functioning economy. One solution would be to make health care less labor-intensive by investing a lot more in information technology. "Low productivity in health is mostly a product of low investment," says Harvard University economist Dale Jorgenson.I have always favored a national healthcare program in the US.

I applauded Clinton's early attempt at a national healthcare system -- an idea ahead of its time, apparently -- and was greatly dismayed when the Republicans distracted our usual idiot voters from any real discussion by terming it "Hillarycare" and making it a referendum on Hillary's role in the administration. These are the same idiot voters who, by the way, were led to obsess over John Kerry's haircuts, tan color, wind surfing hobby, wealthy wife, and unproven accusations about his purple hearts instead of more substantive voting criteria during an election year. But I digress...

I believed for a while that the push for nationalized healthcare would shift from Democrats to Republicans, whose corporate clients are anxious to get out from under the burden of traditional employment benefits (health insurance and pensions). Bush kindasorta started going that direction with his fatally flawed, uber-libertarian "Ownership Society" concept. The "Ownership Society" is designed to shift the full cost of employment benefits back to workers via personal savings accounts (virtually undoing every bit of progress labor has made since the Gilded Age). These accounts might work well for wealthier folks but most voters, even the idiot ones, understood intuitively that it would likely be personally catastrophic for them in the end. Haven't heard much about the grand Ownership Society scheme lately, have we?

So what to do now that healthcare is fast becoming the mainstay of our economy while simultaneously becoming its greatest drain? Seems like quite the catch-22.

People tend to believe that nationalized healthcare is more expensive and of inferior quality. What substantiates this belief??? My father was privately insured and, during the years of his chronic illness, was treated to one horrifying healthcare travesty after another. One incompetent, apathetic doctor after another. One grossly understaffed, profit obsessed hospital after another. His healthcare tab was over a million dollars when he died. A million dollars to endure the relative disinterest and neglect of his healthcare providers while he was alive. They showed far, far more interest in him after his death when it was time to collect their money. Fucking bastards. I won't even go into how we, in the US, suffer the highest infant mortality rate of any industrialized nation at 60% more cost. So please, tell me again how single payer or socialized medicine is the worst thing that could ever happen to us?

Emotional diatribe aside, I think it's time for an honest, apolitical, national discussion on healthcare in this country. It's time to talk about what we, as citizens, want and what we, as citizens, are willing to pay for, and how we, as citizens, think it will be best achieved. And, to set the stage for this discussion, it's time for our nation's leaders to honestly assess and communicate the reality of our economy and quit spinning its condition in a bid for political primacy.