Health Care Article

Economist, Greg Mankiw, posted a link to this opinion piece on health care written by a Democrat who recently lost his father to an infection caught in the hospital. The article is exteremly interesting and filled with fascinating facts and observations. I'd like to summarize some of those facts as the article is a tad long (6 pages).

• In 1954, a minority of Americans had health insurance.
• An insured family will pay on average $654 per year of their own money on health insurance and an uninsured family will pay $583 of their own money.
• An insured family will pay on average $3,809 per year of someone else's money on health insurance and an uninsured family will pay $1103 of their someone else's money money.
• If you confiscated all the profits from health-insurance companies and the 10 biggest drug companies, it would pay for about 11 days worth of care for all Americans.
• If employers paid people directly instead buying insurance on behalf of their employees, then the average person would recieve $1.7 million dollars more in wages over the course of their life.
• From 2000 to 2005, health care costs have increased by 33% in Canada, 37% in France, and 47% in the U.K.. Very comparable to the 40% increase in the U.S.

His solution was to deregulate the most of the system, mandate that all Americans have catastrophic health insurance, get rid of the employer-based insurance system, create Health Insurance Savings accounts, and let most health care be paid for directly by the consumer rather than through insurance.