06/03/09 Baltimore, Maryland Something’s gone awry with the U.S. health care system. We admit, this is a little off our beat, but charts like this leave us scratching our heads:
Given our grotesguely overgrown Medicare entitlement, we suspect Washington is going to start looking into this paradox soon. As we’ve noted before, whenever confronted with a coming debt crisis, President Obama almost always diverts the discussion to health care reform. Whether his approach will work or not, we’re no experts… but something’s got to give here. According to the Congressional Budget Office, $2.5 trillion will be spent to keep America “healthy” in 2009.
Ian Mathias
Ian Mathias is the managing editor of Agora Financial’s Income Franchise, where he writes and researches about retirement, dividend and fixed income investing. Much of his work is featured in The Daily Reckoning and Lifetime Income Report – Agora Financial’s flagship income investing advisory.
Previously, Ian managed The 5 Min. Forecast, a fun, fast-paced daily look into the future of global markets and macroeconomics. He’s also worked in public relations, where media outlets like Forbes, AP, Yahoo! and MSN Money have syndicated his writing. If he’s not at work, you’ll probably find Ian on a bicycle, racing up and down the “mountains” of Baltimore County. Ian has a BA from Loyola University in Maryland.
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We need single payer not for profit health care.
We spend too much money for health care that goes to Wall Street, bonuses, executive salaries and corporate beauracracies. Private health insurance is too wasteful.
Larry is right. Health is a public good. “Market” is inefficient here. That’s why in Europe full coverage for everybody costs much less in aggregate.
… or perhaps it means that the more you spend on healthcare, the faster you die?
C.Union “HMO’s etc
are prepaid w/ big interest
collected in advance, not real ‘insurance.’”