I've thought for a while that health care would be the sleeper issue for this election. Not that it hasn't got much attention recently, but most people seem to think that it will come down to Iraq and jobs and that if Bush can tidy things up in these two areas he will win. My opinion is that there will be a point this year where the festering health care crisis will explode. And when it does it will be very bad for Bush. How bad will depend on how well Kerry is positioned to take advantage.
Apparently Paul Krugman agrees with me.
He seems to think that some kind of universal health care system is the right way to go. Being in the UK and loving the NHS, I agree with him. I'll write about all the ways UK health care is superior to American health care sometime in the near future. For now let me address one of the common arguments against single payer healthcare: the idea that a market based system is more efficient than a government funded one. Krugman points out that the exact opposite is true:
Where is the money going? A lot of it goes to overhead. A recent study found that private insurance companies spend 11.7 cents of every health care dollar on administrative costs, mainly advertising and underwriting, compared with 3.6 cents for Medicare and 1.3 cents for Canada's government-run system.
So much for the efficiencies realized by the invisible hand.
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