The Native Iowan

One thing I really do not like is the name calling, mud slinging, school yard attitude I see within this and other debates. Everyone has something to say. No one is listening much.

So the capitalist hippie pig in me decides to take a quick look at the numbers…

For the sake of flavour I will look at the US, Australia, and Solomon Islands. All three places I call “home”…

The US is highest spender for health care on the globe: 

With a population of 325mil the US currently spend no less than $2,797,600,000,000 each year on health care.

Aus is up there, is a very socialist minded place and spends $1,484,750,000,000 over its 25mil citizens per annum:

The Solomons, of course, is in a different league, with only 500,000 citizens it spends a princely 67,000,000 per annum:

Now, from a business point of view, I shall assume an expenditure of 8608.00 per person each year is pretty decent. If you take the averages here and consider 50% of the population is very healthy, 25% is not well and 25% is very sick we can play with the numbers so we quickly see there are large sums being spent on a percentage of the population but by no means the entire population. Also, other countries (like Aus) do a pretty good job of getting healthcare to its people for an amount much less than the US is spending to inadequately serve it’s population…

So what is the problem?

From a business point of view, when I see high expenditure that confuses me I quickly look at the systems of management within it all. I am a master of rationalizing costs in business. There are smart ways to spend money and, when the numbers get real big, the propensity to throw money at problems leads to a vicious circle of mismanagement and waste. My business sense tells me there is a lot of waste taking place due to an environment of poor management. My initial assumption here, without too much numeric review, is that there is enough money being spent in the US on healthcare but, I shall assume for now, the funds are being mismanaged.

How to fix this… because it is government the propensity to create another system within the system to control the system is what will probably happen. No one ever solves problems in gov’t. Problems usually get restructured or moved or painted a different colour.

But, my guess right now is there is plenty of money in the health care system, it is just being spent on an aging group of baby boomers and their parents. And it is being spent inefficiently, which is of course what government systems naturally do… they perform inefficiently because they do not have any motivation to be strict with the controls. It ain’t their money…

More to come