Would you be willing to pay for universal health care?
In reading a recent article in Time magazine about the rise of the ethical consumer, I came across the results of a recent poll commissioned by the magazine which asked: “Are you willing to pay more in federal taxes to provide universal health-care coverage for all Americans?”
The result: 50% said yes, 46% said no, 5% don’t know/no answer (yes, it adds to 101%, but presumably that is a rounding error). In my mind, this really illustrates the polarisation of opinion on this topic.
So I thought I’d see if I could find some data on whether people are better off paying taxes for universal health care or not.
Health care is an extraordinarily complicated subject, which may be one of the things that makes it interesting. There is no real ability to do controlled studies on health care systems. Things like culture, climate, genetics, diet, and so forth, can make a big impact in health care outcomes regardless of the system of health care delivery, and these things can also change over time.
However, I did come across a fascinating bit of research by Adam Wagstaff at the World Bank. He looked at a number of OECD countries that had moved from tax-funded to insurance funded systems, or vice versa, from 1960 to 2006. The conclusions were quite clear. “…(social health insurance) systems, on balance, have certain characteristics that make them more expensive than tax financed systems, do no better in terms of most health outcomes … may do worse in respect of outcomes that require strong population-level public health programs (such as breast cancer), and do worse in terms of encouraging informal labor markets and discouraging employment.”
I don’t believe most Americans truly understand the cost of their health care system. The cost they pay in terms of higher unemployment and lower wages (since employers are required to pay higher health insurance premiums) as well as the direct cost of health insurance, out of pocket expenses, and of course, the taxes to pay for Medicare and Medicaid (estimated at 18% of the total federal budget in 2009).
