Neither Left Nor Right

The political talk shows have it down to a science. Find one person who calls himself a “Republican strategist,” another that smiles when introduced as a “Democratic strategist,” and pit them against each other, each competing to cram as many meaningless (but focus-group tested) buzzwords as possible into the three minute segment. But who’s not “pro-family?” Why do only some people that work qualify as “working class?” And how can a President turn a $13 trillion economy on a dime by implementing his “economic plan?” Never mind. The host is only too happy to enable the silliness, devoting endless hours to issues like gay marriage and abortion that are easy for the public to understand. Ratings go up, everyone gets a paycheck, and no harm done.

Well, not quite. Consider these two inconvenient truths:

1) If we tally all the benefits due to everyone that will be eligible for federal entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, and subtract all the taxes that will be collected to fund these programs, the government will still need to find $57 trillion to make up the difference. That’s about $200,000 for each American alive today. That figure leapt by $2.5 trillion last year alone, dwarfing 2007’s “official” $162 billion operating deficit. To pay out all of these benefits, the government has but two choices: it can either slash benefits or raise taxes through the roof.

2) Universal health care is already here. Anyone—it doesn’t matter whether they lack health insurance or entered the country illegally—must be given care when they walk into a hospital’s emergency room. Providing healthcare this way is unconscionably expensive: we spend 15% of our GDP ($2.3 trillion in 2007, or $7,400 per person) caring for ourselves, and the percentage is growing (we only spent about 5% of GDP on healthcare in the mid-1960s). We can keep doing this until our entire GDP is consumed by healthcare, or we can make the tough choices required to control costs by providing preventative and catastrophic health services to everyone through the most cost-effective channel. And to control costs, we must come to grips with the fact that the supply of care is not unlimited: the funds for a 90 year-old’s quadruple bypass surgery may be deemed better spent on providing pre-natal care to hundreds of moms, for example. But the patient would always be free to pay for it on his own. And if you’re still convinced that we’re getting our money’s worth from the current “system,” why do Americans’ life expectancies rate 29th (Source: CIA) and 38th (Source: UN) in the world? And perhaps you’re wondering how much Japan, the UK, Germany and Switzerland are spending to live longer than us?

So are “conservatives” ready to turn away sick people from hospitals? And are “liberals” willing to call for limitless taxation to maintain entitlements at current levels? Debating terrorism might be sexier, but these are the real issues that fundamentally threaten our way of life. Yet a serious discussion of how to address them are deftly ignored by the politicians and their enablers in the press.

We report, you decide? Not exactly.


Editor's Note: Hat tip to loyal reader N(2) for the PBS link.