John Goodman’s  “Health Care Alert” is a wonderful addition to the health care discussion at today’s Shaftesbury Society luncheon by Duke law professors Dr. Clark C. Havighurst and Dr. Barak Richman: “Fairness in Health Care: It’s Not Just About the Uninsured.”

Goodman summarizes health care finance: 

Here are the ABCs of health care finance:

  1. The nation is spending 16% of its national income on health care – not 5%; not 10%; but 16%.
  2. A better measure, however, is health care consumption as a percent
    of personal income. On this basis, the average household is spending
    more than 17% of its income on health care.
  3. Better still is to focus just on consumption. The average household
    is spending 19% (almost one out of every five) of all its consumption
    dollars on health care!

Goodman takes Warren Buffet and the Commonwealth Fund to task for their nonsense on health care.  It is well worth reading.