No Fabio I do appreciate the figures. I was speaking of an either/or situation.
You either raise taxes to pay for universal health care under the existing private system, (too expensive to be viable) or you restructure the health system along the lines you mention. A measure which would be very unpopular due to the impact on the share prices of various health industries including Insurance and the equivalent of our hospital trusts.
The fact that Health is the one 'industry' in the US which is more or less recession proof makes it a favourite stock to hold, especially at the moment. It will be a brave politician who will risk the wrath of the small shareholder and those who are members of share-based pension plans.
This is made more serious by the fact that the people who miss out on health care are also those least likely to vote, while small shareholders seem to be very politically aware.
I'm not putting this forward to disagree with your comments on the american health situation, simply to offer an explanation as to why politicians are fearful to do anything about it.
Obama certainly does. His speech only spoke about regulating the insurance industry so it would not drop long-term sick clients. This would increase the costs all around and do nothing whatsoever for the ten-plus per cent of the total population who have no health cover at all. As for McCain, he is a Republican. I expect nothing from him.
Nonetheless, change must come. The current situation in America is simply untenable, and, in spite of the enormousness of private health, state and federal public programs are still ballooning out of control. My guess is that it will take a future conservative president, becoming convinced by the facts - like Peel became convinced that the Corn Laws were untenable, or Nixon that the US could not afford to have no relations with Communist China - to drive real, substantial change. As it is, the United States of America are wasting a tremendous amount of money, sapping both public accounts and the welfare of individual families, for no good reason, and at the same time disgracefully encouraging that atmosphere of sneering incomprehension that drives Europe and the rest of the world away from them.
You either raise taxes to pay for universal health care under the existing private system, (too expensive to be viable) or you restructure the health system along the lines you mention. A measure which would be very unpopular due to the impact on the share prices of various health industries including Insurance and the equivalent of our hospital trusts.
The fact that Health is the one 'industry' in the US which is more or less recession proof makes it a favourite stock to hold, especially at the moment. It will be a brave politician who will risk the wrath of the small shareholder and those who are members of share-based pension plans.
This is made more serious by the fact that the people who miss out on health care are also those least likely to vote, while small shareholders seem to be very politically aware.
I'm not putting this forward to disagree with your comments on the american health situation, simply to offer an explanation as to why politicians are fearful to do anything about it.
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Nonetheless, change must come. The current situation in America is simply untenable, and, in spite of the enormousness of private health, state and federal public programs are still ballooning out of control. My guess is that it will take a future conservative president, becoming convinced by the facts - like Peel became convinced that the Corn Laws were untenable, or Nixon that the US could not afford to have no relations with Communist China - to drive real, substantial change. As it is, the United States of America are wasting a tremendous amount of money, sapping both public accounts and the welfare of individual families, for no good reason, and at the same time disgracefully encouraging that atmosphere of sneering incomprehension that drives Europe and the rest of the world away from them.
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