"Paul Ryan’s new fiscal blueprint doesn’t balance the budget until sometime between 2030 and 2040, and racks up more than $14 trillion in new debt by then. By Ryan’s own reckoning, his plan adds $5.7 trillion to the debt in the next decade alone, while more than tripling interest payments, from $212 billion this year to nearly $700 billion in 2021. The only way such a profligate plan can be called “fiscally conservative” is by comparison to Barack Obama’s budget, which never comes close to balance and loads on more debt even faster. Meanwhile, both the House budget chairman and the president shortchange needed investments in America’s future. The question sane citizens should ask in the face of these dueling disappointments is: Why are these the only choices? [Emphasis mine.]"
"There will be plenty of overheated reactions to Ryan’s budget, declaring him to be either a savior or the devil incarnate. Since neither is the case I want to give folks who are amenable to reason a few facts and perspectives to make sense of it all:"
There is one additional paragraph I'd like to point out:
"My own view is that unless we can find a politically viable way to shrink our radically inefficient health sector’s claim on American output, we won’t be able to retire the boomers, provide decent coverage to the uninsured, shift health costs from corporate payrolls to government budgets (which would be good for business and for workers), and invest in the nonelderly priorities I’ve cited ...."
I think I said something like that yesterday! Here's the link to his column:
OK, it's time for the answers to yesterday's quiz. I hope you had some fun with it! If you recall, I asked you to match countries with their systems of healthcare finance. The countries were: England, Germany, France, Italy, Canada, India, Cuba, Japan, most of Latin America, most of Scandanavia, Spain, Hong Kong, USA, Taiwan, South Korea, Cambodia. Here are the financing methods, followed by the countries that use them.
Method 1 - In countries that follow this model, both healthcare providers and payers are private entities. The model uses private health insurance plans, usually financed jointly by employers and employees through payroll deduction. Your doctor's office is a private business, and many hospitals are privately owned. (Germany, Japan, France, Latin America (to a degree). I didn't ask about them, but Belgium and Switzerland fit in here as well.)
Method 2 - In this system, healthcare is provided and financed by the government through tax payments. There are no medical bills; rather, medical treatment is a public service, like the fire department or public library. Many (sometimes all) hospitals and clinics are owned by the government; some doctors are government employees, but there are also private doctors who collect their fees from the government. (England, Italy, Spain, Cuba and most of Scandinavia. Hong Kong also has a version of this system.)
Method 3 - The providers of healthcare are private, but the payer is a government-run insurance program that every citizen pays into. The national, or provincial, insurance plan collects monthly premiums and pays medical bills. (Canada. Taiwan and South Korea has variations on this system.)
Method 4 - Most medical care is paid for by the patient, out of pocket, with no insurance or government plan to help. (Cambodia, India, and most other poor countries of the world.)
Wait a minute! What about the USA? What system do we use? That's an interesting question, that leads to some really fascinating information, but that's for tomorrow!
No comments:
Post a Comment