Healthcare Expenditures Reach 17.6% Of GDP As Nearly Everyone Get Sick

Health Affairs Magazine reports that health care costs reached 17.6% of GDP in 2009. The figure rose from 16.6% in 2008. The magazine reported that “The growth rate of health spending continued to outpace the growth of the overall economy, which experienced its largest drop since 1938.” GDP fell because of the recession. Health care spending did not.

The report also says that the economic downturn caused fewer could afford to get medical care for themselves.

The part of the analysis that covers the reasons for the rise of health care costs is useful. The solutions for how the situation might be reversed are lacking.

The choice the federal government faces with programs like Medicare and Medicaid is repeated over and over. People who cannot afford health care must turn to Washington. Washington has no money. Rising health care costs make the matter worse.

Curtailing the benefits of Medicare and Medicaid would get most members of Congress voted out of their jobs. Older people tend to vote more often compared to people who are 20. The leverage to keep health care benefits is in the hands of those who want and need them most.

There have been a number of suggestions about how to solve the problem of rising health care costs. One is to cap the fees that doctors, hospitals, and drug companies can charge. That suggestion makes great sense until doctors claim that they cannot provide adequate care at cut-rate prices.

Another alternative is to create a form of triage to determine which patients should receive financial support for health care services. The conclusion will probably be that those left out of any government assistance program should be those are not terribly sick or those too sick to get well. Most of the very sick people in America are older. They do not want to be left to die quickly if their lifespans can be extended. The traditions of letting the old float off on ice flows or wander into the wilderness to die are nearly gone

Nothing will happen to the rising rate of health care until the government is nearly bankrupt from the burden of Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security. Most people scoff at the notion that the trouble would have to get so acute. But, most people want the services that cost Washington so much money to provide. The people who want the same benefits as they have received for year, without admitting it, put the Treasury on the road to insolvency.

A decade from now, America will be one of the healthiest nations in the world, and one of those which has run out of money.

Douglas A. McIntyre