You Want To Go Through This Again?

To all the incrementalists out there, I have one simple question for you: Do you want to go through this again?

If Democrats settle for a half loaf or a third of a loaf or whatever you call this lame plan to slash reform down to non universal coverage plan in hopes of winning one Republican vote, they are dooming themselves to fight this insane battle once again. Eventually Democrats are going to need to fix the mess they left for themselves this time. At some point they are going to need to fight this battle over again when they do go for a full loaf (real universal health insurance coverage).

We have tried the half loaf before. Medicare and Medicaid were a half loaf, COBRA was a half loaf, The Children Health Insurance Program was a half loaf, expanding CHIP was a half loaf. Accepting a half loaf has never made the fight easier next time. The forces against reform always come up in full force looking for blood.

The party has already suffered this time through the lies, the angry town halls, the million dollar insurance company smear campaign. Democrats need to seize the opportunity to fulfill their decades old party promise of passing quality universal coverage. If they settle for some lame half loaf, they will dishearten their base, discredit the party when this half loaf fails, and force themselves to fight this knockdown drag out fight when ever they try this again.

Accepting this terrible half loaf will not only doom millions of more Americans to suffer without insurance, it will doom the Democratic party to reliving this health care fight all over again, except next time the insurance companies will have even more money and more power.

Health Care Reform = A Stimulus Every Year

Much of the criticism against the recently-signed economic stimulus package focused on the cost. At roughly $800 billion, the package was worth 5% of the country's whole GDP last year. Surprisingly, that is less than what America overpays every year on health care. As a nation, we literally waste over $800 billion every year. If we adopt any one of the health care systems used by the dozens of first world nations with universal health care, we would save the equivalent of one stimulus package a year.

What do Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom have in common?

They all have longer life expectancies than the United States. They all have lower infant mortality rates than the United States. They all have universal health care, and they all pay dramatically less for health care.

In 2005, the United States spent 15.2% of its GDP on health care-- the most of any industrialized world. Switzerland (the second highest among industrialized nations) spend only 11.4% of its GDP on health care. The industrialized nations listed above spent on average 9.3% of their GDP on health care. That is 6% less than in the United States-- or the equivalent $830 billion. If our health care costs were in line with the rest of the first world, we would save the equivalent of one stimulus package a year. Because of the scale of our country, we may never be able to make our health care system as efficient as Luxembourg or Finland. We should be able to at least reduce our spending to match that of Germany, France, or Switzerland. Even achieving that modest goal would save our country over half a trillion dollars a year.