When a "trillion" is a really small number
May. 6th, 2009 08:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snousleThis passage from a New Yorker article about the Obama budget made me want to cry:
The deficit spectre has loomed over every major debate. The most contentious issue has been health care. The Administration was divided into three camps. According to White House officials, a group including Vice-President Biden and David Axelrod, a senior adviser, and led by Summers was hesitant to make a major push on health care this year, especially given the fact that a full plan would cost roughly a trillion dollars over ten years.
Hm, a trillion dollars over ten years... let's see, divide by three hundred million people, then by ten years, then by 365 days per year...
This "full plan" for health care costs a whopping NINETY ONE CENTS PER DAY.
NINETY ONE CENTS A DAY.
For a "socialist" to offer the "full plan" on health care. The plan that conservatives are so terrified of.
NINETY ONE FUCKING CENTS.
To be clear, this is far from the total cost of health care, which is approximately $7000 per person per year. Someone has to pay it - but by adding just a few percent more, we could at least be freed from the terror of being "uninsurable", and get rid of the hostile bureaucracy and wasteful blizzard of paper that makes it so difficult to get treated even if you are insured.
And we're not getting it because Americans see a "trillion" and think "oh that must be a whole lot of money, these socialists are ruining the economy".
Might as well just crawl under a rock and die.
The deficit spectre has loomed over every major debate. The most contentious issue has been health care. The Administration was divided into three camps. According to White House officials, a group including Vice-President Biden and David Axelrod, a senior adviser, and led by Summers was hesitant to make a major push on health care this year, especially given the fact that a full plan would cost roughly a trillion dollars over ten years.
Hm, a trillion dollars over ten years... let's see, divide by three hundred million people, then by ten years, then by 365 days per year...
This "full plan" for health care costs a whopping NINETY ONE CENTS PER DAY.
NINETY ONE CENTS A DAY.
For a "socialist" to offer the "full plan" on health care. The plan that conservatives are so terrified of.
NINETY ONE FUCKING CENTS.
To be clear, this is far from the total cost of health care, which is approximately $7000 per person per year. Someone has to pay it - but by adding just a few percent more, we could at least be freed from the terror of being "uninsurable", and get rid of the hostile bureaucracy and wasteful blizzard of paper that makes it so difficult to get treated even if you are insured.
And we're not getting it because Americans see a "trillion" and think "oh that must be a whole lot of money, these socialists are ruining the economy".
Might as well just crawl under a rock and die.
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no subject
Date: 2009-05-06 07:03 pm (UTC)It's vastly cheaper to treat someone with asthma, diabetes or whatever and keep them OUT of those expensive emergency rooms.
Furthermore - if someone contracts a communicable illness, I want them getting treated promptly, rather than spreading whatever it is around! Obviously it depends on the particular illness, but generally speaking one can argue that the sooner someone's treated, the sooner they stop being infectious. That saves money because fewer people wind up getting sick.
And while you point out that health care is more expensive than people realize, there are other indirect benefits, such as better productivity for workers - and hey, employers no longer have to mess with the whole issue AT ALL. How much does it cost businesses just to do the paperwork and whatnot?