Health Reform: A Fight the GOP Might Want to Lose
My latest column for the National Post asks if the GOP is losing an important opportunity to stem the growing cost of healthcare.
You know, if the Democrats want the government to take over American healthcare, they actually have a simpler option than passing legislation through Congress. They can just do nothing. The government is taking over all by itself.
In the United States, government pays the health costs of the retired (through Medicare), the poor (through Medicaid), lower-income young people (through a program called S-Chip), plus federal employees, veterans and native Americans.
On Thursday, the U.S. government’s main source of health statistics, the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, released an amazing statistic: Together, federal and state health care programs now spend more on health than the private U.S. economy. In other words, the U.S. health system is now majority government funded.
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