Health insurance without health care
Amy Finkelstein, co-scientific director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) North America, finds that while health care services for the elderly increased through Medicare, the additional spending resulted in health care inflation for all patients without impacting health outcomes for the elderly.
One reason the United States spends more on health care than other countries is that we are obsessive about health insurance instead of health care.
When the British National Health Service or the Canadian Medicare system spends additional money, they spend it employing doctors, building hospitals or buying medical equipment. When the U.S. government spends more money, we give it to insurance companies.
Take Obamacare. We are currently spending $214 billion a year insuring people through Medicaid (which is mostly contracted out to private insurers) and the Obamacare exchanges. At $1,731 for every household in America, that’s a great deal of money being transferred from taxpayers to insurance companies every year.