Inaction threatens prosperity
Published 4:01 pm Friday, June 5, 2009
The Obama administration is wise to frame the upcoming debate over health-care reform as an economic issue. Beyond the moral failure of having 46 million Americans without health insurance, it is the rising costs and economic imbalances of our current health-care system that make reform so urgent. Without it, our current fiscal woes may seem trivial in another decade.
With the president calling for congressional action on a health-care overhaul this summer, and specific legislation soon to be unveiled, the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers last week issued a comprehensive analysis of the economic impact of health-care reform.
Slowing the growth of health-care costs by increasing efficiency, the report said, will raise Americans’ standards of living, increase national saving and reduce the federal budget deficit. Expanding coverage to all Americans would increase the labor supply by reducing medical disabilities and absenteeism, and allow the labor market to function more effectively by eliminating a major impediment to job-switching — coverage restrictions for pre-existing conditions.
The Congressional Budget Office will weigh in with its own analysis of costs and savings once specific proposals are put forward. The results undoubtedly will be different — these are projections based on subjective assumptions — but if they’re in the same ballpark, the case for dramatic change will be hard to deny.
Other important findings last week, contained in a study by Harvard and Ohio University researchers in the American Journal of Medicine, revealed a startling personal impact of rising health-care costs. It showed that 62.1 percent of all bankruptcies in 2007 (before the current recession) were linked to medical bills or illness, up from 49.6 percent in 2001. Even more telling: most of those bankrupted were well-educated, middle-class homeowners and nearly 78 percent had health insurance when they got sick. The system doesn’t even work for lots of folks who have coverage.
As specific legislation begins to show how health-care reform will look, vested interests will start to defend their turf. The TV ads have already started, grossly exaggerating the nature and effects of change. What’s clear is that without dramatic reform, everyone’s long-term prosperity is in jeopardy.
Costs must be contained, and some health-care providers in our region are blazing new trails of efficiency for others to follow. The system can no longer leave millions uninsured, with their eventually higher-priced treatment subsidized through higher rates on individuals and businesses who are covered.
The nation can’t live much longer with a disease that keeps getting worse. Time is running out to act on a cure.
