Can We Do Anything About the High Cost of Healthcare in the United States?

We have to reduce the cost of healthcare in the United States. We have no choice. We can no longer afford it.  The cost of individual health insurance is now so high that friends of mine who are comfortably well off upper middle class people cannot afford to buy health insurance for themselves for next year. Indeed, anyone who has to buy his or her own health insurance and is also too young to be eligible for Medicare and too well off to receive subsidized health insurance under the Affordable Care Act is in serious trouble.

     This situation is not necessary. It is self-inflicted. We pay far more for healthcare than people in any other country, and we get mediocre results. Effective ways to control costs are available, but we have so far refused to take advantage of them. Both conservatives and liberals offer prescriptions that will not work because neither party has come to grips with the underlying reasons for the high cost of healthcare in our country.

     Conservatives want to pretend that the only problem is the cost of healthcare to the federal government. They offer proposals to turn Medicare into a voucher program and Medicaid into a program of block grants to the states. Such programs will transfer the cost of healthcare to individual patients or to the states, but the cost itself will continue to rise, which means that we will all suffer more and more.

    Liberals want to pretend that if the government offers health insurance to everyone, the problem will somehow go away. Liberals offer programs like Medicare for All or (in Wisconsin) Badgercare for All. Such programs will be good for individuals in the short run, but they will be unsustainable unless they include mechanisms for controlling the cost of healthcare itself. If the programs are unsustainable, individuals will end up bearing the cost, which means that we will all suffer more and more.

     What can we do? We can begin by informing ourselves of the real reasons why healthcare is so expensive in our country and of the things that other countries are doing to deal with the cost of healthcare. Only when we understand what the problem is and what can be done about it, will we be able act effectively to dig ourselves out of the morass into which we have fallen. 

     If you are interested in learning more, you can begin by attending the event at the Copper Rock in downtown Appleton on November 20, where Marty Finkler and Bill McLaughlin will speak on the topic. They are both experts in this area and have much to say that is useful.  You can also read my blog post on this question.  After that, if you want to know something about what is being done in other countries, you should watch the Frontline video “Sick Around the World.” Then you can delve more deeply into the question by reading T.R. Reid’s book, “The Healing of America” and/or Elisabeth Rosenthal’s book, “An American Sickness.” 

      Please take the trouble to inform yourself. If enough of us do that, we will be able to save ourselves from the situation we are in. Let’s do it!