the cost of healthcare
healthcare is a problem in this country, but i haven’t had the time or inclination to dig into it much… so i bounce thoughts off the surface every once in a while, and today i have a number to hang a thought on.
Health Spending In The United States And The Rest Of The Industrialized World [health affairs, july/august 2005]U.S. citizens spent $5,267 per capita for health care in 2002—53 percent more than any other country.
so, with a 40-hour week and a 50-week year, there’s 2000 hours in a working american’s life (for now i’m going to ignore non-working americans even though they count as “capita”). $5267/2000 = $2.63 per hour for health care (if you put in the rest of the “capita” it’s higher, of course).
this isn’t going to be quite fair, but with the federal minimum wage at $5.15 per hour, oddly enough, that $2.63 works out to just a shade over half (51.1%) of the minimum-wage. the reality is probably much simpler – real minimum-wage workers don’t get health care.