Health care numbers

Central to the argument for universal health care is that it would be cheaper than having a lot of uninsured people who get really sick and cost a lot to treat. One would anticipate that the health care costs of uninsured people would be higher than insured folk- after all emergency rooms are expensive, right?

A brief aside- my parents (children of the Depression) never took their children for preventative health care. We got a physical if we had to have one for athletics or summer camp but really only saw a doctor (or dentist) if there was a problem. They were middle-class well-educated people and trusted their judgment to determine if our coughs or aches elevated to the problem level. I don't know if they had health insurance or not, but I do know the cost of treatment was part of their decision-making process and I didn't see a doctor very often as a child. People who think about costs consume less.

Back to numbers- US News and World Report reports that uninsured people get less treatment and pay less, both out-of-pocket and total costs than insured folk. Out of pocket- $583 per year vs $681 (co-pays), total $1686 (paid and unpaid) vs. $3915. And they pay 35% of their total cost versus 17% of the total cost for insured people.

Wow. Let's assume various numbers bandied about are semi-accurate- 40 million uninsured, $2.5 trillion per year spent on US healthcare. One of the beef's with the current health care system is that we spend a large portion of our GDP on health care- about 13% versus about 6% for most of the rest of the first world. Assuming the newly insured (currently uninsured) folk consumed health care as the currently insured folk do universal coverage would cost the US economy an additional $1,000,000,000,000. That's a trillion, folks. Per Year. An increase of 40%- 13% of GDP to 18%.

Clearly, insuring everyone will cost way more than paying the load in the current system of the uninsured. But lets consider the other extreme- what if we abolished health insurance and everyone became uninsured. $3915 goes to $1686 per person per year and our total expenditure drops by 57%!! Suddenly US health care expenses are in line with world-wide numbers as a percent of GDP.