送交者: xj 于 2005-11-07, 12:00:09:
回答: my dream: national health insurance 由 xj 于 2005-11-07, 11:59:36:
Pride, Prejudice, Insurance
Paul Krugman
New York Times, The (NY)-November 7, 2005
General Motors is reducing retirees' medical benefits. Delphi has
declared bankruptcy, and will probably reduce workers' benefits as
well as their wages. An internal Wal-Mart memo describes plans to
cut health costs by hiring temporary workers, who aren't entitled
to health insurance, and screening out employees likely to have
high medical bills.
These aren't isolated anecdotes. Employment-based health insurance
is the only serious source of coverage for Americans too young to
receive Medicare and insufficiently destitute to receive Medicaid,
but it's an institution in decline. Between 2000 and 2004 the
number of Americans under 65 rose by 10 million. Yet the number of
nonelderly Americans covered by employment-based insurance fell by
4.9 million.
The funny thing is that the solution -- national health insurance,
available to everyone -- is obvious. But to see the obvious we'll
have to overcome pride -- the unwarranted belief that America has
nothing to learn from other countries -- and prejudice -- the
equally unwarranted belief, driven by ideology, that private
insurance is more efficient than public insurance.
Let's start with the fact that America's health care system spends
more, for worse results, than that of any other advanced country.
In 2002 the United States spent $5,267 per person on health care.
Canada spent $2,931; Germany spent $2,817; Britain spent only
$2,160. Yet the United States has lower life expectancy and higher
infant mortality than any of these countries.
But don't people in other countries sometimes find it hard to get
medical treatment? Yes, sometimes -- but so do Americans. No,
Virginia, many Americans can't count on ready access to
high-quality medical care.
The journal Health Affairs recently published the results of a
survey of the medical experience of "sicker adults" in six
countries, including Canada, Britain, Germany and the United
States. The responses don't support claims about superior service
from the U.S. system. It's true that Americans generally have
shorter waits for elective surgery than Canadians or Britons,
although German waits are even shorter. But Americans do worse by
some important measures: we find it harder than citizens of other
advanced countries to see a doctor when we need one, and our
system is more, not less, rife with medical errors.
Above all, Americans are far more likely than others to forgo
treatment because they can't afford it. Forty percent of the
Americans surveyed failed to fill a prescription because of cost.
A third were deterred by cost from seeing a doctor when sick or
from getting recommended tests or follow-up.
Why does American medicine cost so much yet achieve so little?
Unlike other advanced countries, we treat access to health care as
a privilege rather than a right. And this attitude turns out to be
inefficient as well as cruel.
The U.S. system is much more bureaucratic, with much higher
administrative costs, than those of other countries, because
private insurers and other players work hard at trying not to pay
for medical care. And our fragmented system is unable to bargain
with drug companies and other suppliers for lower prices.
Taiwan, which moved 10 years ago from a U.S.-style system to a
Canadian-style single-payer system, offers an object lesson in the
economic advantages of universal coverage. In 1995 less than 60
percent of Taiwan's residents had health insurance; by 2001 the
number was 97 percent. Yet according to a careful study published
in Health Affairs two years ago, this huge expansion in coverage
came virtually free: it led to little if any increase in overall
health care spending beyond normal growth due to rising population
and incomes.
Before you dismiss Taiwan as a faraway place of which we know
nothing, remember Chile-mania: just a few months ago, during the
Bush administration's failed attempt to privatize Social Security,
commentators across the country -- independent thinkers all, I'm
sure -- joined in a chorus of ill-informed praise for Chile's
private retirement accounts. (It turns out that Chile's system has
a lot of problems.) Taiwan has more people and a much bigger
economy than Chile, and its experience is a lot more relevant to
America's real problems.
The economic and moral case for health care reform in America,
reform that would make us less different from other advanced
countries, is overwhelming. One of these days we'll realize that
our semiprivatized system isn't just unfair, it's far less
efficient than a straightforward system of guaranteed health
insurance.