Why does the US never consider the cost of medical care as the Number 1 cause of it's decline.?
The US spends more than twice as much per capita on medical care as any other country, and yet the US is rated around 33rd in fhe world for the quality of medical care, and to make it worse, about 50-million citizens have no medical care at all. Medical care is the largest expenditure for the government and the largest expenditure for the citizens, too. If it were not for the excessive expenses for medical care, the US would not be a bankrupt country. Worse still is that reducing medical care prices are not considered by the government. Can someone tell me why this is so.
Good As Gold2011-08-05T16:29:38Z
Favorite Answer
I think the whole problem is the U.S. government is too big and intrusive. It is getting worse. It has caused major problems in education and in the medical businesses. The U.S. needs more economic freedom.
It's not true that the 50 million have no medical care. Like a lot of people who do not bother to think about this issue, you do not understand the difference between "care" and "insurance". You can get one without the other -- which needless to say is the norm in every other product market in existence.
Aside from that, The US is not a "bankrupt" country, and what problems we have in the aggregate have little to do with the cost of healthcare. That is why people don't consider medical costs as the cause of our "decline" -- it isn't.
We do spend more than others on healthcare. I believe this is because we can afford to. You could spend an infinite amount of money on healthcare, since people tend to not want to die or be sick or in pain. Other countries would spend more if they were as rich as us also.
Finally, it's ignorant to say the government does not consider reducing healthcare costs. In fact they are quite obsessed with that -- the federal government and 50 state governments are all obsessed with that -- that you have somehow missed that fact proves you don't much follow the news do you?
There are several powerful entities who focus on containing the costs of health care. The health insurance companies do exactly that -- that's their role -- and people hate them for it. Also needless to say you're not aware of these arcane details, but within the industry are many efforts to reduce costs. There are several group purchasing organizations that exist to bring contractual bulk-buying discounts to clinics and hospitals, and hospitals themselves are always desperately working to reduce and contain costs; it's common for them to join into regional groups to further negotiate discounts.
That's what it takes -- competing interests butting heads and negotiating. You can't just wave a magic government wand and dictate that all the same services remain available, but are just cheaper. There is no escaping economic reality.
You can't simply reduce the price of medical care. Medical care is expensive and to become a doctor, you have to pay fortunes of money to go to school and study very hard. Medical care has to be expensive, or no one will study it and then there will be no doctors. Something that costs so much time and money and stress has to be a highpaying career. The US cannot blame the cost of medical care as their decline, its not like the government pays for the citizen's medical care. The fall of the US as a world power is inevitable, as all great countries must one dayy lose their position and another will take over. India and China will emerge as the new world powers.