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One issue with trying to reform the American healthcare to be more efficient is that as the system is now, healthcare spending accounts for 17.1% of US GDP[1] w

One issue with trying to reform the American healthcare to be more efficient is that as the system is now, healthcare spending accounts for 17.1% of US GDP[1] while in the EU it is an average of 10%. There is a word for eliminating 7% if your country's GDP: recession. If you were to switch to, say, a single-payer system then you would eliminate whole categories of jobs. You might be able to replace that with additional service but it would be very hard. Imagine someone who's made a career out of working for hospitals and calling insurance companies to cajole them into paying up -- what would they do? It is like the IRS pre-calculating your taxes or US society as a whole taking meaningful action on climate change: change would threaten a large number of people's jobs and those people are very motivated to resist it. [1] http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.XPD.TOTL.ZS http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.XPD.TOTL.ZS

mbroncano 10y ago
Another way to think about it is, your country suddenly finds itself with an additional, disposable 7% GDP. Alternatively you can afford extra ~40% health coverage in the form of personal care, hospitals etc. Edit: grammar, numbers ...
- afarrell 10y ago
  Except this isn't Age of Empires. That "7% GDP" is a bunch of unemployed people who have the potential to do useful things, but some-to-most their skills are geared toward navigating an inefficient system that doesn't exist anymore. Some will be able to easily re-apply those skills. Some won't. Even the ones that will are going to be scared of the transition because losing your job is scary. Of course, much of this would be offset by setting up services like the UK's 111 (medical advice hotline) and by being employed by companies like the one my sysadmin-for-the-federal-government father has always wanted to start but can't in case his cancer comes back. But those are both much more abstract and distant hypotheticals that don't yet have voters behind them.
isostatic 10y ago
That sounds very much like the the broken window fallacy
- afarrell 10y ago
  It is indeed very similar. And you would expect the local window-repairmen to be very vocally in favour of maintaining whatever system is causing broken windows.

mbroncano 10y ago

Another way to think about it is, your country suddenly finds itself with an additional, disposable 7% GDP. Alternatively you can afford extra ~40% health coverage in the form of personal care, hospitals etc. Edit: grammar, numbers ...

afarrell 10y ago
Except this isn't Age of Empires. That "7% GDP" is a bunch of unemployed people who have the potential to do useful things, but some-to-most their skills are geared toward navigating an inefficient system that doesn't exist anymore. Some will be able to easily re-apply those skills. Some won't. Even the ones that will are going to be scared of the transition because losing your job is scary. Of course, much of this would be offset by setting up services like the UK's 111 (medical advice hotline) and by being employed by companies like the one my sysadmin-for-the-federal-government father has always wanted to start but can't in case his cancer comes back. But those are both much more abstract and distant hypotheticals that don't yet have voters behind them.

isostatic 10y ago

That sounds very much like the the broken window fallacy

afarrell 10y ago
It is indeed very similar. And you would expect the local window-repairmen to be very vocally in favour of maintaining whatever system is causing broken windows.