Health Care in America

In an article on L.A. Times called Do people really overuse healthcare when it's free? Michael Hiltzik argues whether or not free healthcare is a good thing. In a graph that shows total healthcare expenditure per capita in 2010 for selected countries even though America does not give free healthcare we are still spending the most at $7,910. Where as there are countries that provide government-funded universal healthcare like Canada at $4,285 and Britain at $3,253 who are spending much less. An economist named Steven D. Levitt says in the article that "It doesn’t take a whole lot of smarts or a whole lot of blind faith in markets to recognize that when you don’t charge people for things (including health care), they will consume too much of it." While that does seem true you still have to put other factors in to account such as with families that have high deductible plans. They probably won't spend money on small but important preventative treatments like mammographies, cervical cancer screenings, or even blood test to check glucose and cholesterol levels for things like diabetes. They may save money at the moment but in the long run they could end up becoming very ill and then having to go spend money on very expensive treatments. Just because healthcare is free doesn't mean people are going to be running into the hospitals asking to get chemo treatment. Your thought process is a little bit different when deciding to spend money on a car for example as to when your deciding on whether or not to spend money on a treatment that may save your life. I think this was a great article to read even though I am not particularly intrigued by politics just because it gives great examples of how bad our healthcare is and why a government-funded universal healthcare could be a good thing.