American Health Care!

Some Americans are concerned that rich and elderly people often receive expensive health care that does little or to improve or extend their lives while many children and poor people miss out on much cheaper treatments that could dramatically improve their lives. Of course there are some Americans don't see this as a problem. They merely regard it as nature's way and point out that in the wild lion cubs rarely receive adequate medical treatment while rich and elderly lions are always hogging the MRI machines.

Now some people might think that the U.S. would obviously benefit from some sort of national health system, but I'm afraid the U.S. can't afford this on account of how taxes had to be cut in order to improve the sale of treasury bills. However there is one fairly simple thing that could be done to help even out access to medical care that would be revenue neutral to the government. Put a tax on medical treatment and then redistribute income from it to every American in the form of a "Health Savings Account" that can only be spent on medical treatment.

This would give every American some money for medical treatment which hopefully would improve the lives of the poorer half of the U.S. and result in more healthy years of life gained than are lost due to rich people having to pay more for very expensive treatments.

Of course there are details to be worked out. How high should the tax be? Should newborn babies get a lump sum? Will guardians be allowed to use their own health accounts for their children's benefit? And so on. Also, to prevent too much money being blown on old people who are going to die soon anyway, old people could give what's left in their health accounts when they cark it to other people. For example they could give it to family members or donate it to charity.

If the Bush administration implemented this policy, I am extremely confident that they would mess it up beyond belief and make the vast majority of Americans worse off except for a few corrupt cronies who would be rake in cash hand over fist; quite possibly with giant, combine harvester like, nuclear powered, mechanical rakes.