Utopias in the making by Obama MC

In general, we Europeans tend to think very little, if not absolutely nothing, outside our boxes, that is our heads. Nevertheless when we do, it normally happens that we come across with some kind of difficulties to understand how it could be that things do happen like we can’t think of, like for example global healthcare coverage.

President Obama will next Tuesday sign a long awaited piece of legislation, for which most of his party’s past entourage has long fought for. People like late Senator Kennedy have spent many hours trying to convince a large majority of the American people that having a health market seems not that good as a reality as it seems in the paper/ idea point of view.

The CBO (equivalent of European’s Budgetary office normally integrated within the Finance Ministry’s office) estimates that it will cost roughly USD 940 billion to get a coverage level of 95% of the American population. This accounts for approximately 6,5% of 2009 US GDP figures and, most of all, represents the biggest social spending package a non-European society has defined towards committing to a global coverage health system.

A question arises though: is this the right kind of instrument to get Americans engaged as a country into provide a major breakthrough on their habits as a country? Fundamentally, for us as Europeans, accustomed as we are to expect that the Government will provide us with what is considered a minimum, decent and universal public good, the fact that Americans have not had this kind of safety net type of constitutional right has been always a mistery. How do people with low incomes survive this competitive “survival of fittest” type of society? For all the republicans in the House and some of its fellow Democrats, that is for sure not a problem. Americans can and should strive to make ends with what they are paid for in terms of healthcare.

Somehow though, with such a flexible job market as there is in the US, it seems unreal that people do survive. Or, in other words, it seems also fair to assume that Republicans could have some kind of point, since for example we in Europe, with our stiffer work legislative packages, still assume that we should not pay directly for what healthcare services are concerned.

In an utopian kind of society, a more flexible workforce could and possibly should be compensated with some kind of global healthcare coverage, and a stiffer one with an opposite pay-for-what-you-want kind of system. It seems to make some kind of economic rationality. But the world is often not rational, although Lucas and Chicago’s school of thought might not agree. Not that I’m denying this thesis – which has been the focus os many critics post-Great Recession of 2008 – but we should be interested to know by 2019 or even before that, which in fact have been the results of this experiment on the most freely regulated market economy on the planet.

Let's hope Obama is right and US healthcare system cost drops as we go.