Should the U.S. Have Universal Healthcare?

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Independent of political bent, people who take policy seriously know that it must work  structurally, not just ideologically. And universal coverage is very much a structural problem.

We should absolutely establish universal coverage in this country, for reasons I’ll cover in other arguments. But at the same time, we must address the cost of health care.

Consider that we're now spending about $2.6 trillion annually on health care, more than in any other economic sector. And, in the five years from 2002-2007, the cost of health coverage premiums - where costs throughout the continuum of care converge from the health care supply chain, care delivery and finance sectors converge - rose 4.4 times as fast as general inflation and 3.7 times as fast as workers earnings. 

Worse, economists know that one-third to one-half of all care and cost is waste, created by slop and misaligned incentives in the current system, and bolstered by a policy arena controlled by special interests. 

As Peter Orszag, Director of the Congressional Budget Office told the Senate Finance Committee in June 2007, if we continue to allow Medicare/Medicaid cost to spiral upward as it has over the last 40 years, by 2050 we'll spend the equivalent of the current entire US budget just on those programs! 

So going to a universal coverage system without changing the ways we manage health care could be disastrous.