Who Really Pays For Health Care: The Myth of "Shared Responsibility"

6 March 2008 | vanity

[shrinkermd]

This is a summary of an article by Ezekial J. Emanuel, M.D. titled as of above.

You can find a summary of the article HERE.

The author makes the following points:

• It is a misperception that employers and the government pay for health care. Employees are given health care in lieu of increases in gross and net wages. This is clear from economic data over the last 30 years where adjusted for inflation health care costs have gone up 300%, corporate profits have gone up 150% and employee wages have gone up 4%. Essentially, employees have received more health care at the expense of real in-the-pocket compensation.

• In respect to Medicare and Medicaid, it is imporant to remember their funding is either tax receipts or borrowing. Presently, health care, on the average, is 32% of state budgets and growing. Medicaid alone accounts for 22% of state spending. Between 2000 and 2004 SCHIP and Medicaid state spending increased by 44%!

• There is a myth and it is called "shared responsibility." Workers are lead to believe they are getting something for nothing from the their employers and government when, in actual fact, they are paying for it in other ways.

[MrB]

Shared Responsibility? Is this the new word for communism?

Just how can you justify that it is my responsibility to pay for the needs of anyone else outside of my family?

And not only justify that it is my responsibility, but that it is OK to use the threat of deadly force (law) to make me do so?

[ClearCase_guy]

Workers are lead to believe they are getting something for nothing

Just about all of our problems are caused by the idea that we deserve to get something for nothing. Not only do we deserve it, but we can figure out a way to make a "something for nothing" scheme actually work.

One of these days the people will wake up to the fact that they've been sold a bill of goods.

[Resolute Conservative]

We share it now. We have a large “immigrant” population here and over the last few years when you go to the local Pediatric clinic you are the only one there speaking English and paying your own way. Oh it just burns me up to have to wait for a hour ( what used to 10 minutes ) and know I am paying for all the others there too.

[buffyt]

SOUNDS LIKE TO ME...

From each according to his ability, to each according to his need (or needs) is a slogan popularized by Karl Marx in his 1875 Critique of the Gotha Program. The phrase summarizes the idea that, under a communist system, every person shall produce to the best of their ability in accordance with their talent, and each person shall receive the fruits of this production in accordance with their need, irrespective of what they have produced. In the Marxist view, such an arrangement will be made possible by the abundance of goods and services that a developed communist society will produce; the idea is that there will be enough to satisfy everyone’s needs.

[liberallarry]

Employers pass on mandated health care costs to consumers if they can. Competetion (and other factors) don't always allow them to. Think of the American auto industry.

If they can't their profitability is lowered and that, sometimes, leads to lower wages and/or fewer jobs. Other times investors simply have to live with smaller returns.

[liberallarry]

Just how can you justify that it is my responsibility to pay for the needs of anyone else outside of my family?

Why should I care at all about your family? I'm not interested in paying for a police force or justice system or anything else which serves you. I'll take care of myself.

That the kind of society you'd like to live in?

[MrB]

As if I haven’t seen your reductio ad absurdum from leftists before... rookie.

Leftists justify WEALTH TRANSFER by citing those things that are actually legitimate GENERAL WELFARE items.

Law enforcement and the judicial system are specified in our founding documents as legitimate government powers.

Healthcare is not.

Let me use YOUR line of reasoning and ask if you should be required to pay for my food, housing, transportation, and perhaps even recreational drugs?

How far do you want to take it?

(Oh, by the way, I welcome you to FR, liberallarry. I miss sparring with the leftists on Yahoo. But... you’ll have to hone your arguments better, I’ve had plenty of practice refuting libs.)

[Sgt_Schultze]

You're wrong.

Companies big and small, have vast amounts of unspent money. It's unfair that wealthy corporate tycoons should be able to keep the obscene profits. Government needs to step in and insist that companies treat their employees fairly. You're wrong to assume that any costs a business incurs will be incorporated into the price of their product, or by resisting wage increases, or by reducing dividends. The pot of unspent money will pay for it all.

SS from Fantasyland, over and out.

[Daus]

I'm not interested in paying for a police force or justice system or anything else which serves you. I'll take care of myself.

That the kind of society you'd like to live in?

Fairly simplistic straw arguement. There isn't anything wrong in paying into something you enjoy equally with everyone else. Police protection in your town should be equally distributed where you live and pay taxes. You don't pay for police protection in the crime ridden town one over.

Healthcare is not something that will be equally distributed. You can choose to drink yourself into needing a liver transplant. There is no reason I should be pay for that. You can currently elect to run up your healthcare bill in any number of ways (elective procedures, expensive testing for simple conditions, etc).

[chrisser]

If they can't their profitability is lowered and that, sometimes, leads to lower wages and/or fewer jobs. Other times investors simply have to live with smaller returns.

Or, more likely, the company will raise their prices meaning less consumers can afford their products. When prices rise, demand falls. Fewer workers are needed. Fewer workers benefit from the product.

In extreme cases, the company fails, all the workers are unemployed, nobody gets the products, and everyone whose retirement fund would have been invested in a profitable company suffers.

In less extreme cases, like the auto industry, and entire sector is on the brink of failure, only a cadre of elite employees get the benefits, everyone pays more for vehicles, 401(k)s appreciate less, innovation is stifled, and the social benefits of employee protection, environmental protection, community investment, and tax benefits to all levels of government are circumvented by either the company moving its operations to more favorable countries, or having sales replaced by foreign manufacturs with less restrictive environments.

[liberallarry]

Leftists justify WEALTH TRANSFER by citing those things that are actually legitimate GENERAL WELFARE items.

What's legitimate is determined by those who vote, not by you alone...or your interpretation of the documents of the Founders.

The Founders did not speak unanimously about such universal questions and were wise enough to realize that whatever they thought and said was hardly the last word. They built great flexibility into our Constitution.

I don't like the whole idea of God-given or universal "rights". We the people decide on what kind of society we want and make laws accordingly. So when I hear people talk about the "right" to health care I gag. But I do think that some form of universal health care is in all our interests (we've already recognized that universal innoculation against communicable disease is a good thing). The limit is affordability.

(Oh, by the way, I welcome you to FR, liberallarry. I miss sparring with the leftists on Yahoo. But... you’ll have to hone your arguments better, I’ve had plenty of practice refuting libs.)

Thank you. I share your sentiments. Preaching to the choir is boring, and rarely edifying. By the way, I've been here a rather long time.

[SENTINEL]

The problem with the cost of health care is that it is a government mandated monopoly. It is against the law to practice medicine in this country without a license from the AMA.

The AMA does not issue licenses to people with an associates degree who are happy to make $60k writing prescriptions for a single cycle of antibiotics to customers who choose this level of care. We are instead forced, as it were, to hire a nuclear physicist to install a light switch. We need nuclear physicists to design power plants, but not very many of them. Folks with an associates degree can install a light switch just fine....But if I CHOOSE to WASTE my money and hire a physicist to install my switch I can, because it is a free country.

We need brain surgeons, too, just not to prescribe a single course of antibiotics for an ear infection or something.

[scottteng]

For that matter why should one need a prescription to purchase an antibiotic or almost as highly trained pharmacist to dispense one. Deregulate prescription drugs so that they may be purchased over the counter drug chains could maintain a staff pharmacist available by satellite video in their local store. With the pharmacists happily consulting from their home computers in regards to potential interactions etc. Most pharmacies already print out everything you might ever need to know to go with the drug. A paramedic or nurse could set up shop if you had no idea what to take. Save the doctors for the hard stuff. That’s one reason why the same pills are cheaper out of US because they do not have the excessive regulation.

[CharlesWayneCT]

Unfortunately, there are some people who think we could all get free government, if we just got Bill Gates to pay all the taxes.

Of course, they would also like to get free computer software since Microsoft has so much money.

[Gandalf_The_Gray]

Companies big and small, have vast amounts of unspent money. It's unfair that wealthy corporate tycoons should be able to keep the obscene profits.

I know that you were aiming at parody with your comment but there was a time not too long ago when that was true (except for the "corporate tycoons" keeping the profits).

Back in the mid 1970's many mid to large corporations hired "money managers" to oversee the cash reserves that the Federal Government required they hold to fund their pension plans. In a time of rising markets it didn't take long for most in-house pension funds to generate more cash then the required employer contribution from the corporation. Before too long, the pension fund became the largest (and least known) asset of many corporations.

That started the "merger mania" and the "leveraged buyout" era when companies were bought strictly to acquire the cash assets (sometimes it was done "with their own money" as the raiders issued "junk bonds" and then underwrote them w/ the former pension cash). The rest of the physical assets were broken up and sold off. The former pension fund was seized by the corporate raider and the former employees were handed an annuity from some third tier insurance company.

That "gold mine" has long been played out though.

Regards,
GtG

[socialismisinsidious]

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[listenhillary]

It is a misperception that employers and the government pay for health care. Employees are given health care in lieu of increases in gross and net wages. This is clear from economic data over the last 30 years where adjusted for inflation health care costs have gone up 300%, corporate profits have gone up 150% and employee wages have gone up 4%. Essentially, employees have received more health care at the expense of real in-the-pocket compensation.

Do you want wage increases or healthcare? If everyone dropped their healthcare, I'm sure that 4% aveage wage increase would be many many times higher. Remember paid health care is compensation. It just isn't reported as taxable income in most cases.

Paying for that 300% increase in health care has to come from somewhere. Increased costs to consumers for every item they buy and tight budgets for pay raises.

Not going to read the article, but I'm suspicious of the 150% increase in corporate profits. 1978 was a sucky year for corporate profits for a valid comparison. We were in Jimmah's economic fun house at the time.

[sono]

The first law of thermodynamics, reduced to simplest form, is that you can’t get more than what you pay for.