Translating Warren Buffet Talking About America’s Lovefest with its Failed Health System
Listen to Warren Buffet discuss American healthcare. He’s speaking some serious folksiness, so we’ll translate for you.
Buffet: “We’re paying 17% of GDP for healthcare and no major country is more than 11% and in the pandemic we’ve had a death total as a percentage of population that’s way higher than the rest of the world. We’ve laid out more money and gotten a poorer result….”
Translation: The U.S. Sickness System is a measurable failure.
Buffet: “There’s an ingenious aspect to it - the withholding tax. So instead of having to write a check and thinking how much they hate the government and politicians they look at it as a Christmas Club [when they get a refund…] People are not seeing it as a cost to them and they like that….”
Translation: Withholding income tax fools people into thinking healthcare is free or someone else is paying; it's an act of evil genius on the part of the government.”
Buffet: So many people have a vested interest in the system staying the way it is….For example, the most prestigious people in the community are on the hospital boards."
Translation: Local “nonprofit” hospitals and insurers buy the allegiance of local elites with prestigious board seats.
Buffet: "We were fighting a tapeworm and the tapeworm won."
Translation: The public is being fooled and local leaders are being bought off. It’s hopeless.
Taken together, here’s the Buffet folksiness translated:
The U.S. Sickness System is a measurable failure. Withholding income tax fools people into thinking healthcare is free or someone else is paying; it's an act of evil genius on the part of the government. Further, local “nonprofit” hospitals and insurers buy the allegiance of local elites with prestigious board seats. The public is being fooled and local leaders are being bought off. It’s hopeless.
BTW, we think he’s speaking the truth and is right on all points except the hopelessness.