Category: Briefings (Core)

Phi Beta Iota: The briefing below, flagged by Chuck Spinney from the New America Foundation, fails to make the one really big point: that PriceWaterHouseCoopers has found that 50% of all health care spending in the USA is WASTE.  However, given the profit motive, that waste generates overhead, and so there is no incentive for our greedy irresponsible health care corporations, who have fulfilled all Congressional demands for bribes, to actually try to deliver the best care at the lowest price.  In that light, our health care is actually better than everyone elses, we just charge twice as much as we should.  The other point that the Obama Administration is assiduously avoiding is the cost of Medicare drugs–the so-called “reform,” which is not a reform at all, just the health equivalent of the Wall Street bail-out, finally seeks to acquire drugs at Canadian price levels, or 10% of what we pay now, but avoids completely the disclosure of the fact that other countries such as  Thailand and South Africa pay 1% of what we pay, not 10%.  There is so much dishonesty across every aspect of the health care “dialog” (more like theater of the macabre) that we don't find it at all surprising to see Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT) right in the middle of BOTH the Wall Street bailout with unlimited bonuses, AND the health care debacle.