So why should Americans have to pay more taxes to get a socialized health care system? What justifies this increased tax burden? The simple answer to why we should pay Europe-like taxes to subsidize our health care system is that we already are.
The United States pays more in taxes (excluding private health expenditures, we’re talking about just what the government pays on health care) per capita than does Canada, Great Britain and Sweden. As a percentage of our GDP, this tax burden outranks those of both Canada and New Zealand, who have socialized health care systems. And this doesn’t even take into account the fact that our per capita GDP is astronomical.
This is because the government already covers a lot of the most costly medical cases. Forty-nine percent of all health care expenditures in the United States are spent by the top five percent of all health care spenders, and these tend to be people with chronic diseases and disabilities, and the elderly. The government often covers these people either through Medicare or Medicaid, state health care plans or Social Security disability payments.
Others who contract serious diseases or conditions usually end up covered only after filing for bankruptcy, maxing out credit cards, and losing their homes in the attempt to cover their medical costs – which, in this country, are the cause of around half of all bankruptcies. Of these people who find themselves tragically in debt as a result of a medical illness, three-quarters said they had health insurance at the onset of their illness. It’s true: We spend all this money in taxes and in health insurance premiums, and still we’re often forced to spend ourselves into poverty in order to deal with the illnesses we do get.
So the question is really not whether we should pay more taxes for a public health care system: We’ve already answered this question by doing so. The question is really whether or not we should get one for the money we’re paying.
It’s surprising what an incredible debate this manages to be. None of the major presidential candidates, not even supposed long-time health care reformer Hillary Clinton, are calling for a socialized medical system. At best, candidates have to offer little more than subsidies or mandates for those currently uninsured.
It’s also a pretty universal assumption that health care should not be a luxury. Americans believe that the sick shouldn’t be allowed to die simply because they cannot pay their medical bills. If you’re among those who think people should be sentenced to death by their lack of net worth, you should probably stop reading now and take some time to seriously reevaluate your lack of a moral compass. But even if you don’t think people are entitled by their humanity to basic health coverage, maybe you’ll be persuaded by your immense personal cost for having them not so entitled.
Every year, the government and private companies spend trillions – 16 percent of our GDP in total, more than any other country – on health care costs. Companies are often economically required, by rising health care costs, to outsource jobs to countries where they can get the government to cover their employees. Small businesses are often hit the hardest, as their employee base is so small it’s hard to efficiently cover them. We’re all personally paying the private costs of health care too, either passed onto us in prices we pay for consumer goods, our actual health care insurance premiums or the out-of-pocket costs we have to pay for medical treatment, which account for 12.5 percent of all health care expenditures.
None of this includes the indirect costs we pay for not having a concrete health care system: The costs of imprisoning untreated drug addicts, costs of treating people with serious conditions that could have been avoided had they been able to get treatment earlier, the costs of arresting, housing and sometimes treating people with untreated mental illnesses who sleep on the streets (moral compass, anyone?)
I’m not suggesting an increase in taxes we pay to the government. I’m only suggesting an increase in services we get from it. We could chalk this up, perhaps, to an argument about government waste: It’s simply too wasteful to allow the government to keep taking so many of our tax dollars and not providing us with the guarantee of health care coverage when we get sick.
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