Robert J. Samuelson attempts in his latest Newsweek column to turn the health care debate away from the discussion of universal insurance coverage:
Whoever wins should put health care at the top of his agenda. But the central problem is not improving coverage. It’s controlling costs. In 1960, health care accounted for $1 of every $20 spent in the U.S. economy; now that’s $1 of every $6, and the Congressional Budget Office projects that it could be $1 of every $4 by 2025. Ponder that: a quarter of the U.S. economy devoted to health care. Would we be better off? Probably not. Countless studies have shown that many diagnostic tests, surgeries and medical devices are either ineffective or unneeded. ?
Greater health spending should not have the first moral claim on our wealth, because its relentless expansion is slowly crowding out other national needs. For government, higher health costs threaten other programs ? schools, roads, defense, scientific research ? and put upward pressure on taxes. For workers, increasingly expensive insurance depresses take-home pay, as employers funnel more compensation dollars into coverage. There’s also a massive and undesirable income transfer from the young to the old, accomplished through taxes and the cross-subsidies of private insurance, because the old are the biggest users of medical care.
Speaking of cutting health care costs, it’s a popular topic for John Locke Foundation analysts.
