American Dinosaurs: What’s the Matter With Health Care and Education?
Welcome to America’s biggest long-term challenge: Our medical and education industries are a two-headed hydra of economic inefficiency, over-eating our resources and under-serving our needy
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/05/american-dinosaurs-whats-the-matter-with-health-care-and-education/256807/#
A very interesting article that does an interesting job of explaining the disconnect between our society’s 1% and the rest. It discusses a potential (but hardly likely to be actually implemented in our oligarchical society) solution to the education conundrum, but not so much for health care. As for the impact, our expensive and inefficient system has a huge cost:
Health care and education together account for about 24 percent of the American domestic economy. The OECD average expenditure on healthcare and education together is 14.7 percent of other industrialized economies’ GDPs, meaning that the United States spends 63 percent more than other countries spend to educate and care for its citizens. As a result, the United States has taxed itself a whopping 63 percent more than necessary to have a profile of subpar performance. Put another way, if our health and education systems were as efficient as those of the average OECD country, we would save $1.4 trillion per year and, if they were as effective as those of the average OECD country, we would experience a very large improvement in education and health outcomes at the same time.
This ‘tax’, btw, isn’t something that the government gets that it can subsequently use to stimulate the economy, build roads and bridges or whatnot, but goes into the pockets of the oligarchy to continue to sustain the dichotomy. Think about that next time you visit the doctor or send a child to school…
