[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Joel A. Harrison

By any measure, the United States spends an enormous amount of money on health care. Here are a few of those measures. In 2006, U.S. health care spending exceeded 16% of the nation’s GDP. To put U.S. spending into perspective: the United States spent 15.3% of GDP on health care in 2004, while Canada spent 9.9%, France 10.7%, Germany 10.9%, Sweden 9.1%, and the United Kingdom 8.7%. Or consider per capita spending: the United States spent $6,037 per person in 2004, compared to Canada at $3,161, France at $3,191, Germany at $3,169, and the U.K. at $2,560.

By now the high overall cost of health care in the United States is broadly recognized. And many Americans are acutely aware of how much they pay for their own care. Those without health insurance face sky-high doctor and hospital bills and ever more aggressive collection tactics—when they receive care at all. Those who are fortunate enough to have insurance experience steep annual premium hikes along with rising deductibles and co-pays, and, all too often, a well-founded fear of losing their coverage should they lose a job or have a serious illness in the family.

by Robert in Monterey [courtesy of Calitics - Front Page]

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By State Senator Sheila Kuehl

by David Dayen [courtesy of Calitics - Front Page]

by David Dayen [courtesy of Calitics - Front Page]

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Randy Bayne
The Bayne of Blog's California Notes

Last night I spoke to the Sierra Foothills Democratic Club in El Dorado Hill on behalf of John Edwards. Below is what I told them.

Thank you, Sierra Foothills Democratic Club for inviting me to speak on behalf of Senator John Edwards. If you get all your news and information from mainstream media you may not have heard about it yet, but Senator Edwards is running for President of the United States.

I probably over thought what I could tell you about Senator Edwards this evening. I could tell you about his plan for universal health care that puts us on the road to a single payer system. I could talk about his plan to immediately withdraw between forty and fifty thousand combat troops from Iraq. I could talk about his support for middle-class families and working Americans. His education proposals may interest some of you, and his energy plan works toward energy independence and fights global warming. I could also spend some time talking about his plan to revitalize rural America.

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Anthony Wright
Executive Director of Health Access California

In the Republican presidential debate last night, Dr. Tim Johnson of ABCNews won the section on healthcare, of which none of the candidates had an adequate response.

Dr. Johnson's set-up piece made the point that the Republican plans more perhaps more radical than the Democratic plans, in that they attempted to shift people away from group coverage--largely through the employer-based coverage that people have now--into the individual market, via Health Savings Accounts, etc.

Dr. Johnson further gave facts about how individual coverage is more expensive and less efficient--partially because of administrative costs, the inefficiency of having to sell the products one at a time, the lack of any economies of scale, and the inability of the purchasers to leverage their market power to get better cost and quality. He didn't land the most obvious punch--that many of the Republican candidates, as cancer survivors, would be unable to buy coverage in most states, including New Hampshire (and California), because of their "pre-existing conditions."