Deja Vu all over again

"How good is government medical care?" asks Osler L. Peterson. Has a familiar ring, doesn't it? You really think you're reading today's arguments about healthcare--the fact that European countries already have it and their citizens are doing fine, that many elderly are suffering under high costs, and that there are already programs for the poor. But it was published in The Atlantic Monthly in September 1960 (the month I got married). This wakes you up.

"The Health Insurance Institute estimates that “getting sick and getting well” will cost the average American $105 in 1960. This sum will be distributed about as follows: $34 for the hospital, $26 for the doctor, $28 for medicines, $11.50 for the dentist, and $5.50 for other costs. The average United States family in 1957-1958 spent a little over $300 for medical care. These averages are influenced by many factors. Those with hospital insurance received more care than those without, and families with higher incomes spent more than those with smaller ones."

Using Measuring Worth (which only goes through 2006) we can look at several ways to see $105, the CPI probably being the most familiar.

In 2006, $105.00 from 1960 is worth:

$714.65 using the Consumer Price Index
$581.70 using the GDP deflator
using the value of consumer bundle *
$849.03 using the unskilled wage
$1,586.70 using the nominal GDP per capita
$2,631.92 using the relative share of GDP

I don't know if there is an accurate figure on health care costs--it depends on what think tank and which lobbyist are beholden to which party. I know ours is terribly high and we have "government health care," i.e. Medicare. This site says it is over $6,000 per person a year--not the best, just the most expensive.

What's probably changed since 1960 is indigent care. The son of a friend recently had an appendectomy--was hospitalized four or five days. He is unemployed and uninsured. It cost him nothing at the hospital down the road where it is $5,000+ a day to have a room in which to recover, and that doesn't cover the doctor and lab costs. If he'd been insured, he would have had a deductible and a co-pay, and the hospital might have had strict insurance guidelines on how long he could stay, or his employer might have lost its coverage. Under managed care, doctors and hospitals are no longer allowed to do what's best for the patient, only what's best for the bottom line. Imagine how much worse it will be with a committee of bureaucrats. The Katrina Care Plan, I like to call it.

But another thing that has changed since 1960 is heroic measures for people with a very limited life expectancy. An 85 year old dear man we know has several systems failing at once. Any one of them could kill him, but he had surgery this week for the most serious--he was given only 2 months to live if this wasn't repaired. I truly don't know what I would do if it were me, or my parent or husband, and none of us do until it happens to us. My mother had surgery for colon cancer in her 80s and had another wonderful five years with her family and husband, celebrating 65 years of marriage, dying of something totally unrelated. My father had a heart by-pass when he was 70 and lived another 19 years, needing to replace a few pacemakers and outliving some of his doctors.

Do you have the answers to how much is too much? Because you know well, without private supplemental policies, none of the above examples would be covered under Katrina Care.