Japan spends half per person on healthcare than we do. Europeans spend a little over 50% what we do. These nations are as healthy or healthier than we are. This indicates that we waste half of what we spend on our moneycare. Worst yet even with Obamacare we don’t cover about 15% of our citizens. Many still have too little income to buy into subsidized Obamacare. These are left to live with untreated illnesses and often die from them.
Based on comparison with Europe and Japan it is reasonable to conclude that we get nothing for about half the $3 trillion we spend every year on moneycare. That’s $1 ½ trillion or $1,500,000,000. That number is astronomical. It is almost incomprehensible.
Here’s what it is:
Our entire annual military budget is “only” $500 billion. Imagine all the aircraft carriers, other naval ships, Army tanks and helicopters and Air Force fighters and bombers. Add all the maintenance, and replacement of that equipment and military personnel salaries together and you get $500 billion. Moneycare wastes three times that every year.
The total national student debt crisis is “only” around $1 trillion dollars. Moneycare wastes 1 ½ times that total every year.
Our federal deficit is “only” about $680 billion. Moneycare waste is over twice that yearly
We have suffered some terrible hurricanes. Hurricane Katrina destroyed $128 billion. Hurricane Sandy did $50 billion in damages. Andrew hit $44 billion.
Moneycare waste costs as much as 12 hurricane Katrinas or 30 Hurricane Sandys or 34 hurricane Andrews every year.
Moneycare waste comes to about $5-6,000 yearly for every man, woman and child in the U.S.
This does not include the suffering and deaths from:
1. Prescription drugs : Errors in dosages particularly in hospitals, adverse drug reactions and interactions kill thousands yearly. The exact number will never be known because drugs are often not suspected or investigated as a cause of death.If a person dies of a heart attack caused by a drug, “heart attack” will most likely be written on the death certificate as cause of death, not the drug.
There is proof drugs do kill. The data comes out after people are killed. The FDA then forces the drug off the market. The big drug companies often pay only a fine.
Drugs also do nonfatal damage to the body. The liver must clear out drugs and suffers from it. Antibiotics destroy the good bacteria in the gut paving the way for other illnesses. Antibiotics are over prescribed for virus infections like colds and respiratory illnesses that they have no effect on. The list could go on and will in future blogs.
Americans use more drugs per person than any other developed country. Over prescribing drugs is part of the waste and corruption of our moneycare.
2. Infections in hospitals alone take about 100,000 lives per year . It is estimated that hospitals kill as many as crashing a Boeing 747 full of passengers every week. We would never tolerate that with the airlines. Why are hospitals different?
$1 1/2 trillion dollars is 9% of GDP. That means one of every $10 spent in the U.S. yearly is for moneycare waste. We get nothing for it! With $5-6,000 for every man, woman and child in the U.S. going down the drain every year, is it any wonder we have:
1. An economy crawling along with high unemployment, underemployment and lousy paying jobs?
2. A stressful falling standard of living.
3. College graduates who owe $1 trillion can’t get good jobs. Student loans defaults are a national agony and economic crisis.
4. Credit card debt is rampant. Much of which is unpaid moneycare bills.
5. A good retirement is becoming a mirage.
6. Millions can’t even afford the subsidized insurance offered by Obamacare.
We are in deep trouble but someday we will be looking back at today as “the good old days”. Baby boomers will be retiring. Millions of doctors and nurses will be among them.
The demand for moneycare will increase while the supply of providers will shrink. There will be doctor shortages and a worse nurse shortage than we already have. There will be less paying into Medicare and more taking out. Somewhere down the road Medicare will face some cuts just when it is needed the most.
We have rising rates of obesity, high blood pressure and diabetes (all interrelated). These will cause more cancer and heart disease. All of this will hit a system that is overpriced and heading for collapse.
Preventing illness and squeezing the waste and corruption out of moneycare is a matter of national survival.
We are going to need trillions of dollars to repair deteriorating infrastructure.
Even preventive medicine can’t undo the inevitable. We get older and are going to need more sensible and affordable care. Few are going to be ready for retirement in this economy.
The government is already heading for bankruptcy. We can’t look to the government to pay for this.
Americans are living in a stupor about what is coming. We are being betrayed by bought off and incompetent politicians.
We need a second American revolution. The first American revolution was against the British who did close to nothing compared to what moneycare is doing to us now.
If the people of the Soviet Union could overcome totalitarian communism nonviolently, the we can do the same to moneycare.
ReplaceMoneycare will focus on the danger and how we can save ourselves.
REPLACE MONEYCARE 