The purpose of this Article is to describe what Universal Health Care (UHC) is, how no civilized nation can be without it in today's world, how and why it costs the nation much less to have UHC than not, and how the lack of UHC is one of the Key reason US economy is doing so bad, so bad compared to nations such as EU that do have UHC.
What is Universal health care (UHC)?
There are 2 Key parts to UHC:
- UHC is getting health care totally for free for the Taxes that you pay. UHC is not as the Democratic candidates in US are saying the ability to buy health insurance at affordable rates and not getting coverage denied due to "pre-existing condition". Although these Democratic initiatives are certainly a good improvement over the current "nearly criminal" way health care is administered in US, they are not what UHC is, since UHC has been well defined by Europeans and other developed nations which have been practicing it for more
than 30 to 40 years now.
- UHC is also providing health care on a "Not-profit-Motivated" basis. This means, as in France, Germany, UK, etc. Doctors are paid very well, from 100K to 200K Euros per year but it also means that these health care services are not run to maximize profits, which means maximize costs, which means their CEOs will not make $400Mill per year
and NO wall street investment bankers will make Billions off them and they will NOT contribute 100s of Millions of Dollars to the candidates running for office. Hence these savings enable these nations that provide UHC to their people, which means providing their people with total health care for free, while health care costs are 8% of their GDP.
Why it costs, the nation and thus ultimately the people, much less to offer UHC than not?
In US, where 48Mill people have NO health coverage and of those that do Millions find out that when they actually
need health care that their insurance provider will deny them coverage for one reason after another or will
hit them with one exorbitant co-pay and deductible after another, thus driving many into financial ruin,
health care is taking 16% of GDP, while in Europe where they have UHC and everyone gets health care for FREE,
health care is taking 8% of GDP!
WHY is that? How is that possible? Answer is, as described in the part 2 of what is UHC is because health care in
Europe is provided on a "Not-profit-Motivated" basis.
So as you can see given that health care takes 16% of GDP in US and ONLY 8% of GDP in Europe that
far from UHC costing too much, that it costs FAR LESS than what health care costs in USA because health
care in US is operated on a "for profit" basis.
Why lack of Universal Health Care ("UHC") is one of the KEY reasons US economy is doing so badly?
From corporations point of View:
Who wants to hire employees in US when you have to, in addition to their payroll and payroll Taxes,
also pay their health insurance costs, which costs are escalating without control.
Whereas in Europe, China, Canada, typical payroll Taxes are same as in USA and you DONT pay anything
else on top of that for the employee's health insurance.
OTN, you surely hear all the time for Example that how Ford is suffering under crushing health care costs
and as a result it lost X$Bill and laying of 1000s, whereas you don't hear same about German or French auto makers
because they have NO health care costs to pay, since they have UHC.
From small business owners (entrepreneurs) point of view:
The situation is even worse as a small business owner, aka entrepreneur, since you have to buy health insurance
as an individual or a small group which means you are paying even more for health insurance than Fortune
1000 companies would pay! Thus making it impossible to very difficult for many Americans to start a new
business due to Today's escalating cost of the health care, and as we all know small business owners (entrepreneurs)
are the KEY to a vibrant economy, so when you hamper this part of your economy due to something as
essential and basic as health care, then needless to say you are burdening your economy in an insufferable degree.
From Governments (aka Society's) point of view:
As noted above lack of UHC is causing large corporations to ship jobs to countries that do have UHC, new foreign
corporations are not coming to US and going to other counties that do have UHC for same reason large
US corporation are shipping jobs to countries with UHC and small business owners failing all too often in US
due to burden of health care costs and the stress of it.
You add these together and what you get is lower Taxes for the US government and higher health care costs
that are covering less and less people, which is a recipe for economic failure.
Conclusion
When ALL other, I repeat for the sake of Lunatic Republicans ALL OTHER, developed countries in the World are offering their people UHC, then capital will flow to those countries, such as Europeans, which will ever more so accelerate the US economic failure into an economic catastrophe. And this is exactly what is happening to the US economy as evident by Euro being so much more valuable than US dollar, or avg home prices in Europe being so much more valuable than the average home prices in US, or US Auto makers being bankrupt while European Auto makers are doing great*, etc. etc.
* For those lunatic Republicans who will say to this statement "Sales of Autos are down everywhere...",
we are talking about European Auto makers not going bankrupt and not that sales of Autos are down, to be more precise market valuation of VW alone is 10 times of all US Auto makers combined. OTN, VW closed today at $248.00 for market valuation of nearly 70Billion.
