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
53
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.
What can be inferred from the passage about health care in America?
选项
A、American health care is cheap.
B、The government can afford to pay health cost.
C、Health care has become a problem to be heeded.
D、Health care is not so serious as to affect the economy.
答案
C
解析
从全文的分析可以得出如下结论,美国的卫生保健体制应引起人们的足够重视,而不是像人们想象的那样,费用低廉甚至是免费的。故C为正确答案。
转载请注明原文地址:https://jikaoti.com/ti/71UYFFFM
0
专业英语八级
相关试题推荐
TheEnglishVocabularyVocabularyisacompleteinventoryofthewordsinalanguage.Itcanbedividedintoactivevocabulary
BlackpeoplewerefirstbroughttoAmericafromAfricaas______.
Twotechniqueshaverecentlybeendevelopedtosimplifyresearchandreducethenumberofnonhumanprimatesneededinstudiesof
A、people’slivesB、environmentalissuesC、consumptionpatternsD、mediaadvertisementsD
Theterm"formallearning"isusedinthispapertorefertoalllearningwhichtakesplaceintheclassroom,withoutregardto
TheWatergateAffair,thepoliticalespionagescandal,finallyledtotheresignationofPresident______in1974.
A、developingandutilizingnewsourcesofenergy.B、reducingtaxesontheworkingpeopleoftheUS.C、encouragingtodesignand
TheChamberlain’sMen,inShakespeare’stime,werearemarkablegroupofpeople-excellent______whowerealsobusinesspartnersa
Madrid—ItwasnomistakethatuniversitycampusesproliferatedduringSpain’sdecade-long,construction-ledboomyears.Educatio
Madrid—ItwasnomistakethatuniversitycampusesproliferatedduringSpain’sdecade-long,construction-ledboomyears.Educatio
随机试题
应用糖皮质激素治疗感染性休克时,其使用量为常规用量的
工件在立式车床上最后夹紧后,应再复查一下找正位置的正确性,并检查其变形程度。()
参与凝集试验的抗体主要是()
精索是输送精子的肌性通道。()
甲市荣华食品有限责任公司因长期经营管理不善,累计拖欠到期债务8000万元,其中包括力尚商业银行债务3000万元、其宏集团货款2000万元以及其他一些债务。2007年8月1日,其宏集团向该市中级人民法院提起诉讼,申请宣告荣华食品有限责任公司破产。请回答以下问
在下列内容中,属于对建设工程进度目标进行全方位控制要考虑的问题是()。
遵守行文规则是为了()。
根据下列材料回答问题。在所有商品中,伪劣商品批次占所检查商品批次的比例最高的是哪种?()
设有关系歌手(歌手号,姓名,最后得分)和关系评分(歌手号,分数,评委号),每个歌手的最后得分是所有评委给出的分数的平均值,则计算歌手“最后得分”的SQL语句是
A、DiamondHunting.B、Diamond—APreciousStone.C、Diamond—SymbolofFortune.D、HowIsDiamondFormedandFound?D判断推测题。文章主要讲钻石的形成
最新回复
(
0
)