Robert Samuelson of Newsweek (alas, this story isn't online) says the most important issue with health care isn't that 1 in 7 is uninsured, it is that by 2025 health care will suck up $1 in every $4. We spend almost exactly the same amount of money for health care per person on poor than we do on the rich. While I agree this statistic is useful to say the poor aren't sucking up health care dollars, it is only one measure. Another is how disastrous to family finances is a hospital stay to a poor person with no insurance compared to anyone (rich or not) who does.
Samuelson has a few other points to make. Ted Kennedy at the Dem Convention says that health care is a right. If so, how far does that go? That leads me to these questions: How do we balance the expense of that right against the right of education and its expenses? Is there ever a time to say that further care is too expenses and the outcome too tenuous to bother proceeding? Is health care still a right if the patient persists in extremely unhealthy habits?
Medicare, since it covers the elderly, covers a large portion of America's health care. Perhaps 30% of that is wasted, partly through services that aren't needed. Medicare can drive cost reduction by changing reimbursement rules, encouraging electronic record keeping, and reducing dubious tests.
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