Abstract

The Catastrophic Health Care Fiasco
Hess, John L. | May 21, 1990 issue

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Alone among developed countries, the United States has no national health system. The working population was supposed to depend on voluntary insurance plans, but was given the added privilege of contributing to two new programs. One was Medicare, for elderly or disabled people on Social Security. The other, Medicaid, was a welfare program for the very poor, financed 50/50 by Washington and by the states under conditions that virtually guaranteed corruption, waste and parsimony. Year in and year out, the cost of health care has risen two to three times the inflation rate. Total health spending has soared to 12 percent of the gross national product and it is still climbing.

See Also:

MEDICAL care, Cost of; HEALTH insurance; MEDICARE; MEDICAID; UNITED States
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