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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From across the pond…
Date: 2009-05-07 09:35 am (UTC)Prescription prices are negotiated between the drug firms and the government. Even tourists can benefit from this. Five years ago I had to buy a name-brand antibiotic and the price was 3 €. When I returned to the States, my doctor told me it would have been "at least $50."
The current health-care system in the US has many corporations and individuals who will do all that they can to protect their revenue flow.
Chuck