The Healthy Stimulus

I was raising a jar with a traveling salesman in a pub in St. Boswell, Scotland. The guy was a Brit who had had as much to drink as I and he was going off on the National/”Socialist” Health System in his country and how shitty it was and how high taxes were to pay for it. His dudgeon too was high. After a while I thought to ask if his taxes were more than the pound equivalent of five or six thousand dollars a year for one person’s health insurance in the US. He was appalled. “You have to buy your own insurance?” he queried incredulously. “Oh no,” says I, “It’s a free country. You don’t HAVE to buy anything. You can just go without, as many millions do who could never ever afford it. For some though, their employers pay a good portion of it though the individual has to chip in a co-pay each month and is of course responsible for the deductible which can be crippling indeed,” I explained. “Good Lord!” he exploded.

We are possibly about to enter earnest arguments at the highest level of government which will address the kind of national health care that Canada and most of Europe have had for decades. It seems to me that the timing of this push couldn’t be more advantageous for the pros. My chief thought here is that reducing health care costs for all Americans will act as a stimulus package of a kind in that it will mean extra money for folks to put food on their families, get new tires for the tired old beach wagon, allow parents to let little Susie go on the class trip to the Bridgeport Zoo with the rich kids. And if you believe that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure you will want to pay particular attention to the argument that the most neglected and important segment of prospective beneficiaries of this program will be the zero to three year olds.

Even if you don’t feel like throwing tax money at the problems of the people who contribute least to society, from a practical point of view, it is better to get the little buggers a fresh start with proper nutrition and medical attention than wait until they are older with myriad more problems and attendant higher costs. And you will pay. You are now. Why not manage those costs? If the cost of managing is more, the cost of paying for inattention is worse. If the cost of getting a kid off on the right foot improves their chances of making a go of it in the real world seems high to you now, think about likely paying for his or her being in prison at $22 grand a year for minimum security and $60 K for maximum security. For every dollar spent on higher education, New Hampshire spent 73 cents on corrections. O yeah, we got crack babies in one of the prettiest places in the world and they got daddies and mommies in jail which we pay for even as we do for the life long medical bills and foster care of the babies. National Health can’t cure all that and maybe it is only an OUNCE of prevention but the consequences of not dealing with it up front, are, and will remain fruminous.

One of the less than sincere arguments is that you won’t be able to pick the kind of health care you want. What, you think insurance companies are gonna take this sitting down? Of course there will be red carpet service for people who want it and can afford it and the doctors that provide it will thrive. Just ask our veterinarian who you have to wait a month to see even though you’ve spent thousands with him just in the last year. And what if you do have to wait a little? It’s free (sort of). I use the VA system and they tell me who to see, when to see them, what meds they will pay for. When I had to have an operation I went where I was told and I had a couple of guys in the business from Dartmouth-Hitchcock bending over me who would have, in their private practice, charged 30 to 40 times what I paid. The VA system will be likely be the model for the ineluctable system that this nation will go towards. It has already been tried and tested. The wrinkles are being worked out. I have zero complaints. And did I mention the price?

This is the time to do this thing. Just yesterday, doctors, hospitals, drug makers and insurance companies voluntarily offered $2 trillion in cost reductions over 10 years by taking a one and a half percent cut in something. Dude! Why not save THREE percent and solve the whole economic crisis. No wait, SIX percent!