首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
Let’s Not Hide Health Costs We are awash in health-care proposals. President Bush has one. So does California Gov. Arnold Sc
Let’s Not Hide Health Costs We are awash in health-care proposals. President Bush has one. So does California Gov. Arnold Sc
admin
2013-01-24
33
问题
Let’s Not Hide Health Costs
We are awash in health-care proposals. President Bush has one. So does California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden has a plan, as does a coalition led by Families USA (a liberal advocacy group) and America’s Health Insurance Plans (a trade group). To some extent, all these plans and others aim to provide insurance to the estimated 47 million Americans who lack it—a situation widely deplored as a national disgrace. But the real significance of all these proposals, I submit, lies elsewhere.
For decades, Americans have treated health care as if it exists in a separate economic and political world: when people need care, they should get it; costs should remain out of sight.
About 60 percent of Americans receive insurance through their employers; to most workers, the full costs are unknown. The 65-and-older population and many poor people receive government insurance. Except for modest Medicare premiums and payroll taxes, costs are largely buried in federal and state budgets.
It is this segregation of health care from everything else that is now crumbling—and the various health proposals are just one sign. We see others all the time. For example, even with employer-provided insurance, workers’ monthly premiums (which cover only part of the costs) have skyrocketed. From 1999 to 2006, they doubled from $129 to $248.
Look at Massachusetts. Last year the then Gov. Mitt Romney made headlines by signing legislation to cover all the state’s uninsured. The law required that everyone with incomes three times the federal poverty line buy "affordable" insurance (people with incomes below that threshold would be subsidized on a sliding scale). Romney suggested annual premiums for a single worker might total $2,400. But when insurance companies recently provided real estimates, the cost was much higher: $4,560. Is it a sensible policy to force workers with a $30,000 income— about triple the poverty line— to spend nearly a sixth of their budget on health insurance, as opposed to food, rent or transportation? Good question.
The hard questions won’t sit still, because health care (now a sixth of the economy, up from an 11th in 1980) is too big to be hidden. Myths abound. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the doubling of premiums for employer-provided coverage doesn’t mean companies shifted a greater share of costs to workers. In both 1999 and 2006, premiums covered 27 percent of costs, says Paul Fronstin of the Employee Benefit Research Institute. It’s simply the rapid rise in total health spending that’s depressed workers’ take-home pay.
One myth about the uninsured is that, because they’re heavy users of emergency-room services, providing them with insurance (and regular care) would actually lower their costs. This may be true for some—but not most. The trouble is that the uninsured don’t really use emergency rooms heavily. A study on the journal Health Affairs finds that their use is similar to that of people with private insurance—and half that of people with Medicaid. The upshot is that extending insurance to all the uninsured would be costly, because they would get more and (presumably) better care. John Sheils of the Lewin Group estimates the annual cost of their care would rise 75 percent to $145 billion.
Our health-care system will inevitably combine government regulation and private enterprise. But what should the mix be? Which patients, providers and technologies should be subsidized and why? How important is health care compared with other public and private goals? Will an expanding healthcare sector spur the economy—or, through high taxes and insurance premiums, retard it? We have refused to have this debate for obvious reasons. A friend of mine recently had a near-death experience; he survived only because he had superb medical care. Debating health care makes us queasy, because it pits moral imperatives (including the right to live) against coldhearted economics.
I don’t intend to examine—at least now—all the new proposals. Some would do better at some goals (say, protecting the poor) than at others (say, controlling costs). But the Bush proposal does have one huge virtue: it exposes health-care costs to the broad public. By not taxing employer-paid insurance, the government now provides a huge invisible subsidy to workers. Bush wouldn’t end the subsidy, but by modifying it with specific deductions for insurance ($15,000 for families, $7,500 for singles), he would force most workers to see the costs. By contrast, some other proposals disguise their costs. Schwarzenegger’s plan shifts costs to the federal government, doctors and hospitals. It’s clever, but it perpetuates the illusion that health care is cheap—or even free.
However our health system evolves—with more government control or more market influence—Americans need to come to a more realistic understanding of its limits. Underestimating its costs and exaggerating its benefits guarantees disappointment. If the present outpouring of proposals signals a start of our needed debate, then it is long overdue.
According to the passage, a big difference between the Bush proposal and the Schwarzenegger proposal is that_____.
选项
A、the latter hides the health-care costs
B、the former hides the health-care costs
C、the latter does better at controlling costs
D、the former does better at controlling costs
答案
A
解析
由第八段可知,布什提议与施瓦辛格提议的一个重要区别是,前者向人们揭示了健康的费用,使人们对该费用有一个清楚的认识,而后者虽然将费用转给了联邦政府、医生或医院,但却使人们对卫生保健产生幻想,认为其费用是低廉的。故A是正确答案。
转载请注明原文地址:https://jikaoti.com/ti/01UYFFFM
0
专业英语八级
相关试题推荐
A、AMuslimextremistgroupbasclaimedresponsibilityforthebombingonMonday.B、AChristianextremistgrouphasclaimedrespo
Amongthemanywaysinwhichpeoplecommunicatethroughspeech,publicspeakinghasprobablyreceivedmorestudyandattractedm
Thespecializedortechnicallanguageofatrade,profession,orsimilargroupiscalled______.
Twotechniqueshaverecentlybeendevelopedtosimplifyresearchandreducethenumberofnonhumanprimatesneededinstudiesof
Theterm"formallearning"isusedinthispapertorefertoalllearningwhichtakesplaceintheclassroom,withoutregardto
In1932,AmericanPresidentFranklinD.Rooseveltpromiseda"______"togetAmericaoutofthedepression.
A、enterthesecondrounddirectly.B、bethepresidentofHaiti.C、avoidasecondroundrunoff.D、defeathisrivalinthesecond
历史的道路,不是平坦的,有时走到艰难的境界。这是全靠雄伟的精神才能够冲过去的。一条浩浩荡荡的长江大河,有时候到很宽阔的境界,平原无际,一泻万里。有时候流到很逼狭的境界,两岸从山迭岭,绝壁断崖,江河流于期间,回环曲折,及其险峻。民族生命的进展,其经
随机试题
相对剩余价值是怎样生产出来的?
血液透析系统监测的参考值分别是:反渗水细菌总数为________;进口水细菌总数________;出口水细菌总数________。
A.肺痈B.肠痈C.乳痈D.丹毒E.疔疮紫花地丁尤善治()
A.肺结核球B.急性血行播散型肺结核C.肺癌D.肺脓肿E.支气管扩张女性,60岁。高热20天,咳黄脓痰1周,痰中带血。胸部X线检查示右下叶背段类圆形密度增高影,内有液平。可见于
患儿,男,1岁。出牙、坐立、行走迟缓,可见方颅,肋软骨沟,X型腿,伴多汗肢软,舌淡苔少,脉细无力。其治疗宜选
设A是n阶矩阵,矩阵A的第1列的2倍加到第2列,得矩阵B,则以下选项中成立的是()。
下面没有语病的句子是()。
下图为一个简单的互联网示意图。其中,路由器R的路由表中到达网络40.0.0.0的下一跳步IP地址应为______。
Wheredothespeakerswork?
Whatdoyouneedtodoinordertounderstandthelecture?NowtherearefourthingsthatI’mgoingtotalkabout.Thefirstthi
最新回复
(
0
)