Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: The US health care system is an existential threat to our country.

9 months ago
46

"When discussing improvements to US health care policy, politicians from both parties often say, we have the best health care system in the world. That is a lie. The US health care system is an existential threat to our country. If the American experiment fails, it will not be because we had the wrong marginal tax rate.
It won't be because we don't have the perfectly optimized level of social safety net spending. It won't be because of the culture war and DEI issues at the media trumpets to orchestrate the division among all of us. No, if America fails, the chief reason will be because we let our country get sicker, more depressed, fatter more infertile at an increasing rate while crippling our national security, bankrupting our national budget with health care costs. Every major pillar of the US health care system, as a statement of economic fact, makes money when Americans get sick. The most valuable asset in this country today is a sick child.
The pharma industry, the hospital industry, and medical school industry make more money when there are more interventions to perform on Americans. And by requiring insurance companies to take no more than 15 percent of premiums, Obamacare actually incentivized insurance companies to raise premiums to get 15 percent of a larger pie.
This is why premiums have increased 100% since the passage of Obamacare, making healthcare the largest driver of inflation while American life expectancy plummets. We spend four times per capita on healthcare than the Italians, but Italians live 7.5 years longer than us on average.
And incidentally, Americans had one of the highest life expectancies in the world when I was growing up. Today, we fall on an average of six years behind our European neighbors. Are we lazier and more suicidal than Italians? Or is there a problem with our system? Are there problems with our incentives? Are there problems with our food?"

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