Health care costs are skyrocketing out of control, the headlines blare.
More than 40 million Americans cough and sniffle through life without health insurance, critics complain.
Thomas Jefferson, in his treatise for independence, wrote passionately of mankind's inalienable rights and the fundamental right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. But, nowhere in all the surviving paperwork can we find evidence the founding fathers argued health care is – or should be – a fundamental American right any more than owning a house. Guns? Yes. Antibiotics? Not so much.
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That being said, from a practical, economic standpoint, it behooves us as a society to maintain a healthy – and consequently productive – work force. Hence, our system of employer-funded health care.
But, it's only fair to point out what the newspapers, pundits and candidates often overlook, or simply misstate. It's not health care costs that are growing so much as health care spending. Health care makes up roughly 16 percent of the gross domestic product, according to a recent study in the Harvard Business Review, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. And, also in fairness, despite our private system, the government still manages to foot the bill for nearly 45 percent of those costs in this country.
Costs, and spending, are bound to go up with better technology, prolonged life spans and the extended treatments – particularly pharmaceutical – that accompany increasingly older health care users.
There's no question health care spending remains a large, and growing, segment of our economic output as a nation. So is entertainment. And you don't hear the candidates bashing how much we spend on movies. Unless it's the latest Michael Moore pap.
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