Against a background of a hotly-fought election, with some of the issues before the Court like immigration and health care reform sure to contribute to the ideological divide, “rambunctious” may prove to be an understatement of the nine months ahead.
The starting point for the health care debate is that the US spent nearly $2.2 trillion, or $7,400 per person, on health care in 2007. To put that in context, $2.2 trillion is double the total of discretionary spending, which includes defense, in 2010, and itrepresents 16% of America's annual GDP.
Those numbers and percentages have been been rapidly rising in real terms over the last 40 years. The US spent $714 billion on health care in 1990 and $253 billion in 1980; as a share of GDP, health care has increased from 7.2% in 1970 to a projected 20.3% in 2018.
The conservative Roadmap's guiding philosophy is the vaunted economic efficiency of the free market,with hundreds of millions of individual choices in the health insurance market driving down the overall cost of health care provision.
Both Medicare and Medicaid began in 1965 as part of President Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society". Medicare is funded solely by federal dollars, partly through an employee payroll tax, and provides health care coverage for participants who are over 65. Medicaid is a joint state-federal enterprise, with states generally receiving a dollar of federal money for each dollar they spend, allowing low-income families to receive medical treatment.
The highlight of Rep. Ryan's recommendations for Medicaid is the issuing of a debit card to low-income families, loaded with a set amount of funds that can be paid to approved health care insurers.
Monday, October 3, 2011 at 9:00