Yep. That’s what I said. Or, more acccurately, it’s what David Gratzer says:
American health care is feverishly expensive because it’s so cheap: People pay just 13 cents directly on every health dollar. That’s the core economic reason why costs continue to rise year after year.
Gratzer’s larger point is that, regardless of what happens on reform, American medicine is socializing itself. An ever-increasing number of people are on some sort of government health plan:
Since 1999, government health care has steadily grown, from 24.7% of the population to 29%.
Even people who get insurance through their employers are largely insulated from the cost of their own health care. As Arnold Kling puts it, we have “insulation” rather than insurance.
More and more people pay less and less for their care. So, we use too much of it and the excess demand drives up costs. Perversely, Obamacare seeks to exacerbate the trend.
UPDATE:
As if to prove Gratzer’s point about how little skin Americans have in the health care game, one of Sulllivan’s readers whines because his share of his own coverage is going up for the first time in ten years:
Human Resources explained the changes that would occur in 2010. It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone but the employees will be paying more in premiums and deductibles. Our deductibles have not increased in 10 years so this is a hard pill to swallow.
This is how Americans think about health care. While the CPI increases every year for everything from food to automobiles, we think that health care should be somehow exempt.
Ironically, while we bitch about the occasional increase in our share of the costs, don’t even think about telling us we can’t have that CT, or MRI we want—when we want it.
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