Alvin Steinberg
Email Address alvins387@aol.com
This is the type of issue that will win elections.
Americas Biggest Unspoken Security and Economic Problem
This is information about the economic potential of increased medical research spending, which we should advocate for. It also discusses the death rate of some illnesses.Some people will have different figures but if reason prevails, the economics demand that we do much more medical research. Only fools will come to a different conclusion. The general population is not familiar with the following information.
People are very concerned about health costs. It is advisable to show the economic reward potential of increasing the amount of money spent for medical research.The National Institutews of Health(NIH) budget was reduced 25% over the last few years, after considering inflation because of the sequester. Decreasing medical spending will help us cope with our ninteen billion dollar federal budget deficit. People worry about that.
The United States spends 3.1 trillion dollars a year on health care. Per capita spending was $9,697 in 2014. (California Health Care Almanac for 2014). The two thousand and and sixteen health care spending will be even higher. The health cost for a family of four costs on average $38,788 a year in 2014. This year it will cost even more. That is more money than tens of millions of families earn, especially after taxes.
These are some figures from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality,
In 2002, the 5 percent of people with the greatest health care expenses in the U.S. population spent 49 percent of the overall health care dollar. Those in the top 5% spent, on average, 17 times as much as those in the bottom 50%.
- The lower 50 percent of spenders accounted for 3 percent of the total national health care dollar.
- (2. Cornwell LJ, Cohen JW. Characteristics of people with high medical expenses in the U.S. civilian noninstutionalized population, 2002. Statistical Brief #73. March 2005. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Rockville, MD. Website: fttp://meps.ahrq.gov/mepsweb/data_files/publications/st73.pdf. Accessed April 7, 2006.
The cost of cancer costs in 2010 dollars is $157 billion dollars. In addition, there are costs for Social Security Disability, welfare, food stamps, etc. That also amounts to billions of dollars. This year the cost of cancer will be higher.
590,000 United States citizens will die of cancer in 20016. That' is about 1600 people a day. During the 15 years of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars 6,280 American died in combat.. That is about four days of cancer deaths in 2016.
The Kaiser Family Health Care Foundation in May of 2012 said that 5% of the US population use half of the health care and spend almost 50% of all health costs.
If we do the math and extrapolate the figures to 2014, we see that 50% of the healthiest Americans use only ninety billion dollars a year of a more than three trillion plus health care system. Few seniors fall into this category. If everybody were in this category, the health care expenditures would go from about three trillion dollars a year to one hundred and eighty billion dollars. That is a savings of two trillion eight hundred billion dollars a year.
In addition to the potential medical care savings, we can save hundreds of billions of dollars yearly from costs such as, Social Security Disability, welfare, food stamps, special transportation, loss of workers in the labor force, etc.
We should also remember that thousands more Americans die of illnesses every two days than died in combat during the twelve years of fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. About 9600 Americans die of illnesses every two days and about 8200 American died in the two wars. Of course, our soldiers are entitled to the highest honors. Deaths from illnesses are an American security problem, which we can solve.
The whole world would benefit from American research. We could make this an international effort, where researchers all over the world would cooperate. It would bring countries together. There are International medical advocy organizations,
We can use Moveon.org, Change.org, Facebook and other Internet social media to spread the message and get increased cooperation.
The four billion eight hundred million dollar increase over five years that congress passed only covers inflation for the National Institututes of health. There is no increase. We are being fooled. You can write to your two senators and congressmen telling them of your anger over this issue.
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