Without question there needs to be health reform in this country. Whether people take advantage of the system and live off the government depends on how the reform gets done. There is actually very little taxpayer money that goes to pay for uninsured emergency room and other health related visits. Some, but not much, at least comparatively speaking. Federal, state, and local governments support care of uninsured patients through public health clinics and through payments to safety net hospitals that care for the poor and uninsured. A recent study (as reported by The Commonwealth Fund) documented that these governmental expenditures total approximately $30.6 billion a year. There are other costs, as well, such as costs to employers in lost productivity, which can be significant, and other consequential costs. The same report showed that approximately $34.5 billion of the costs were born by the health care system itself (hospitals, doctors, etc.), but makes note that the actual costs have not been systematically documented. These numbers seem to be more in line with reality than with the over- or under-inflated numbers you get depending on the agenda of the person presenting them.
As a result of not having insurance, and thus no real primary care physician, many people end up going directly to the emergency room, where costs are significantly higher than if they were treated by in a primary care setting. So in that sense health care reform make a lot of sense. But that's not a quick fix to the problem, as it is a complex one. One, you have hospitals who have to inflate the cost of service in order to pay for those without insurance. Two, hospitals and doctors inflate the cost of service to be precisely the maximum amount that an insurance company will pay, which is in most cases more than the services would and should cost to begin with. Then you've got pharmaceutical companies who inflate the cost of prescription drugs in the US (to near criminal levels) because they have to recoup the cost of R&D somehow, and because in countries where they have universal health care there is a ceiling on what pharma companies can charge for medications, but here in the US the insurance companies will pay for it. It's pretty sad that a prescription in the US that costs $300 a month, will cost you $15 if you fill the same prescription with the same medicine (not counterfeit) in England, Canada, Mexico or Germany.
Health care reform needs to be about a lot of things, and one of them needs to be more than just lip service about controlling costs. In every iteration of the Health Care Bill, controlling costs ends up being who gets to control the money, meaning the government. But a fundamental change of thinking and regulation needs to take place in the free market to actually control costs. Like pharmaceuticals, where they are purely for profit with a shareholder foundation. That needs to stop, not to the point where they are government-controlled not-for-profit organizations, but to the point where everyone gets paid a fair wage, and have enough profit for R&D without having enough profit for obscene executive bonuses and shareholder dividends. You do that and the cost of health care will plummet. Do that with the health care providers, as well, and the costs become manageable. Then you force insurance companies to lower rates in relationship to the actual costs.
In countries where there is universal health care, they cover everybody and do so at a lower cost, and they do it by putting a clamp on pharmaceutical companies, what health care providers can charge for services, on salaries of health care providers. If it's universal, then it shouldn't mean the industry itself can get universally rich, and that's how it is in other countries, but the Bills presented thus far end up allowing the for-profit industry itself to remain at the same, or greater, level of profitability. And the taxpayers will have to pay for every it of it. Everyone will get covered, but it won't be at a lower cost at all. The Congressional Budget Office keeps hammering on that one simple fact, yet everyone else inside the Beltway keeps on ignoring it.
When you look at those statistics that show the US ranked this or that in whatever category you like, here's one to take note of...
Doctor's Average Income
United States $132,300
Germany 91,244
Denmark 50,585
Finland 42,943
Norway 35,356
Sweden 25,768
