The Chinese make a case for universal health care: Universal health care increases the propensity to spend. That is, if people aren't having to save up 40%+ of their income every year in case they get sick and need medical care, they can go off and buy more stuff, therefore employing more people, therefore getting closer to the goal of full employment for the economy, which, as I mention earlier, is a goal because that maximizes use of human capital in an economy and eliminates the possibility of civil disorder that could be harmful to the heads of the elites who rule the country (assuming said employment is sufficient to keep together life and limb).
Right now, people are clinging to jobs they hate for fear of losing their health insurance. People aren't branching out and forming small businesses to pursue a new innovation they've thought of for fear of losing their health insurance. These people, freed to create, can create more jobs on American soil, but right now they're trapped. Universal health insurance would free them. That was a threat to the elites back in the days when the Fortune 500 employed most Americans and competition from small business was like garlic to a vampire, but now that the primary competition comes from overseas, well... it's a lot easier to buy a small business and the product it makes than to try to coerce said product out of miserable people stuck in jobs they don't like. Hmm...
-- Badtux the Healthcare Penguin
Exactly!
ReplyDeleteIt also give people the freedom to move something I would do in a heartbeat if I knew the insurance was there.
Now that Dopey is out of the White House and Hopey is in, I'd consider moving back to the U.S., even with the economic disaster unfolding. We have enough money set aside to ride it out for a decade, and we could cope with living in reduced circumstances. However, I'm older than you, Tux, and Mrs. Bukko is older than me. Do we want to return to a country where, if we get sick, we have to suffer and die? Hell no. That's why we're looking at Canuckistan. Which is a damn shame. We'd make good citizens of the U.S. again. Health care is one of the factors keeping us out.
ReplyDeleteExactly again! People don't dare try to start a small business because of the health insurance problem. They don't dare move to certain states where they won't be eligible to buy health insurance because of preexisting conditions or to certain other states where they can't afford what's on offer. And if you do manage to buy health insurance, you'll be lucky to just put up with $5,000 or $10,000 in copays and deductibles and not-covereds if you wind up in the hospital; some insureds find themselves not really insured for all practical purposes.
ReplyDeleteSingle-payer universal now!
(And you're ever so right about wannabe entrepreneurs and self-employeds; in my line of work, I know dozens of them. A million new businesses would bloom!)
And Bukko, if you're old enough, Medicare is pretty decent.