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Edited on Wed Aug-12-09 11:04 AM by HamdenRice
I was listening to news-talk radio on a liberal station yesterday and a guy called in who was somewhat right wing, but he made one good point (then a lot of stupid points).
He said that 40 years ago, when health insurance was still relatively new, it was mostly for catastrophic illness, and your regular family doctor visit was usually paid out of pocket.
I definitely remember being a student over the summer without insurance around 1982 and getting chicken pox. I went to the neighborhood doctor who treated me for $20 -- and even at that, his attitude was like, hmmm how about you just give me twenty bucks or whatever you can afford.
Now even counting inflation, few people can afford even a routine check up! It's way more than the equivalent of $20 in 1982 dollars.
There are 2 distinct components of health insurance now: actual insurance for big expenses like surgery; and a savings component which is just a way of putting away money every week for routine health care.
The dirty little secret of this debate is that in any system, almost everyone who is working class and above in income is going to pay for his or her own routine health care. The system can help you save up for it, but it won't pay for it. It's kind of like a Christmas club savings account.
But this isn't fair unless the routine care is something an average person can pay for.
I also remember back around 1979 when my then university announced that doctors had surpassed MBAs in projected earnings. (That changed after the explosion of Wall St in the 80s). But the point is that I remember in the 1960s, doctors made about as much as elementary school principles. Now they almost all expect to be millionaires, and we can't afford the routine component of care if the person we are going to expects to make a million a year.
I don't even just blame the doctors. An entire parasitic set of industries has grown around them. For example, Medical school tuition used to be within reach of working class parents. Now a medical student puts himself or herself in debt for hundreds of thousands of dollars -- the university, student loan parasites and other industries are blood sucking the doctors.
I was teaching in the 90s, and this professor who was "running" for dean was canvassing and came to my office. He made this pitch for why one of his platforms was that we had to charge way more for tuition -- which was already around $40,000. He said he had done calculations that showed that by graduating from our school, students would earn at least $1 million more over a lifetime than if they didn't graduate and --this was the shitty part -- the university had to capture more of that value added. In other words, universities are now pricing themselves to capture as much future income of graduates as possible.
My friend is a professor of medicine, and she says that between med school loans, and the ambition young doctors have to lead the good life right away by buying first homes on graduation, many start out life $1 million in debt. That's not a typo. Some young doctors are starting out $1 million in student loan, mortgage and credit card debt.
I don't see how we can unwind all of this shit, and I'm beginning to think the whole thing has been fucked up beyond our capacity to reform it.
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