How We Measure the Economy Wrong
Robert Reich, in today’s featured video, says we measure the economy wrong. Rather than focus on GDP and the stock market, which is distorted by extreme inequality, we should direct our attention to kitchen table issues like rising costs of living, public education, and public health. What if we made strategic national investments in a healthy, skilled, and productive workforce paid well enough to generate demand for the goods and services they create? Wouldn’t that eliminate the need for so many social programs or locking people in jails where they aren’t contributing to society? After all, as Benjamin Franklin said, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” It’s cheaper too.
Clearly, American capitalism is broken, and so is our politics and healthcare. The incentives are wrong, and the profit motive causes the immensely profitable medical industrial complex to view patients as paying customers. Their aim is to keep patients coming back, paying, because they’ve learned prevention and cures are far less profitable than continuous, long-term treatment. That seems counter-productive, except to investors.
Americans generally spend twice for healthcare (now $4.3 trillion/year) as as people in other rich nations, yet we live sicker and die younger and don’t cover everyone. Healthcare costs are the #1 cause of personal bankruptcy, so why do some people continue to think America has exceptional health care?
What will it take to reform our broken healthcare system?
Industry consolidation, deregulation, and extreme wealth has corrupted our political system and our healthcare too. Like pharmaceuticals and health insurance, 75% of American industries have consolidated in the last few decades. That includes oil & gas, shipping & airlines, baby diapers & formula, meat & poultry processing, broadband & news media, and even soda. Just as Starbucks dominates coffee, Pepsi and Coke dominate carbonated soft drinks, giving them monopoly power over purchasing, pricing, and wages.
With so much profit at stake, and with political influence investments generating such large returns (often greater ROI than any other investments), our first trillion dollar election now seems possible — even likely. After all, the healthcare industry alone could justify spending $1 trillion in just one election cycle to avoid losing $2 trillion/year from a single-payer system that reforms healthcare and cuts costs to match the average of other nations. And then there’s the US Chamber of Commerce, representing corporations that see healthcare as a way to keep workers locked into low-wage jobs.
If healthcare corporations and insurance companies are seen as “persons,” as the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision says, then we might ask, what sort of persons are they? That’s the question presented in the award-winning documentary, The Corporation, which you can watch here. Thankfully, there are bipartisan organizations like American Promise, which is working a For Our Freedom Amendment that would overturn Citizens United.
I encourage all readers to get involved politically to protect our democracy, free speech, and right to vote so we can begin addressing other needed reforms.
