the real reason we don't have national health care?

It is often argued that if Western Europe, Canada, Japan, Brazil, China, the UAE, Israel, Qatar, India, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Kuwait, Taiwan, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Thailand and even Uganda have national health care systems, the United States should also have socialized medicine. People who make this claim often cite the fact that the United States has more money than any of the other countries with socialized medicine, and some of the best doctors in the world. However, maybe the United States can't have socialized medicine because one factor is significantly different in the US than in other developed nations: demand.

Americans are the least healthy people in the developed world, and this might be part of the reason we don't have a national healthcare system. First off, our lifestyle is really not healthy. We eat food that is of low quality and travels far to get to us. Most people don't even eat real food, but instead eat processed food and food products. We have high rates of alcoholism, and smoking. On top of it, we don't like to exercise. It's just not fun, so why do it? And of course, we allow our cities and environment to become incredibly polluted. Put all of these factors together and we should be the most at-risk for serious disease. True, our health care system does do a great job of taking care of us when we become sick or in danger of dying (provided you have insurance or lots of cash), but as many doctors and public health officials know, prevention and a healthy lifestyle are the best way to avoid many of the major causes of premature (and expensive) death. Additionally, our nasty lifestyle also puts us more at risk for non-life-threatening illness, and we have more acute care throughout our lives than people in other countries. So what's a sickly nation to do?

While these issues would present a challenge to having a national health system, especially in the beginning, it's also a call to action. The health care system in the United States is clearly failing. We are getting less healthy over time, despite improvements in technology. We are critically lacking in preventative care both structurally (there isn't enough emphasis on it from hospitals and other care facilities) and as individuals (most people can't get it/can't afford it). It is hard to disseminate public health information in this incredibly overburdened system, and there is no real authority to communicate new health information. We allow medical decisions and policy to be determined by the public's ability to pay for treatments, rather than prioritizing what would actually make the country most healthy. Economists would say this is a problem of scale and risk. Right now, medicine is centered around an individual patient, his/her disease risk, and ability to pay. With a single-payer system, the risk is pooled, and a person with bad luck is not financially totalled by their health care costs. Nor is the country, as not that many people die from catastrophic accidents anyway.

As unpopular as it sounds, a good solution may very well be to increase taxes but abolish private health insurance companies. Think about this option. If we had single payer health care, the costs to the individual would be less, the costs to companies would be less, and insurance provisions for employees could be made compulsory. Those who cannot work would be or who end up in very expensive medical situations could be covered from surpluses that go into the system for the healthy.

I'll use myself as an example. Right now I pay about $636 a year for health care, plus a little over a thousand a year in drug and appointment co-pays (plus about $1,615 a year for Chinese medicine. thanks for not covering the only thing that works for me, insurance companies). This is how much it costs to maintain my health in a good year (yikes). On top of this, my company is actually paying over $5,000 a year to insure me. And they're paying for the costs of my care ($2,460 paid in for drugs, about $600 for medical visits). That puts the amount paid for me to have Western medical treatment at about $9,696 per year. If the government instead taxed me about $1,000 a year (less than my insurance and co-pays), and taxed my employer about $2,000 a year, it would cover my prescriptions and medical visits and cost about $6,000 less to treat me for a year. It would cost me $636 less a year, and my employer $6,000 less.

One could say that such a plan would destroy the health care industry, and that it would be devastating to all of those who would lose their jobs. I won't deny that, and there would definitely have to be some sort of plan to compensate for the loss of that sector of the economy. Obama's plan to have 300,000 work on digitizing medical records is a step in that direction. However, we can't deny that the situation is already devastating to so many people. While it would be economically damaging to do away with private health care, it's already economically disastrous to have individuals be responsible for all of their health care, even in times of crisis; for American families to over-pay for their coverage; and for the insurance companies to focus on the health of their stock prices over that of consumers. Companies and small businesses especially could benefit from paying less for health care in this time of crisis. Seventy nine MILLION Americans are already struggling with insurance debt. Can we really afford to keep on living like this?