One of the "irrationalities" at the heart of the US is its health care system. Profit is at the heart of the American health system. This means that a significant part of every American dollar spent on health care, goes straight into the pockets of shareholders. It means that those who run the for-profit health care companies and who are at the top of the health care pyramid in the US, are making, thanks to consumer spending, thanks to government health care subsidies, and thanks to health insurance company spending, hundreds of thousands of dollars per year in salaries and stock profits. Replacing this for-profit health care system with a non-profit one would, of course, bring down health care costs because it would eliminate the profit motive at the heart of the American health care system.
The American for-profit health care system is not only "irrational" because it is largely for-profit. It is also "irrational" because there are several centralised corporate for-profit health care companies and several for-profit centralised corporate insurance companies all doing the same thing. These for-profit corporations, which dominate the American health care sector, all have "irrational" redundancies. Hundreds of employees are doing the same thing in these several corporate medical bureaucracies, in other words. This means that a significant percentage of every health care dollar spent in the US is going to support redundant bureaucracies and redundant bureaucrats. Streamlining and rationalising these several economic for-profit bureaucracies would, of course, bring down American health care costs.
The American for-profit health care system is "irrational" in that millions of Americans are uninsured even in the era after the Affordable Care Act, a government/private health care programme that allowed and allows millions of uninsured Americans to obtain health insurance. Currently, even with Obamacare, many Americans simply cannot afford health insurance given its high costs. Many Americans, even if they have health care, may have insurance plans that have high deductibles. Many small businesses in the US do not offer health care to their employees or offer high cost health care or health care plans with high deductibles to their employees who, as a result, are unable to afford health care or allow them to go to the doctor when they are ill. Additionally, given that millions of workers do not get paid time off from work, this, along with the fact that millions have no health care or can't afford the deductibles in their health care plans, means that millions of Americans cannot go to the doctor when they are ill.
The fact that millions of Americans cannot go to the doctor when they are ill because they have no health care, they have health care plans with high deductibles, and get no paid time off from work, becomes particularly dangerous in times of epidemics and pandemics. This means that those who, for example, feel somewhat ill, as many with Coronavirus do, do not seek medical attention and are not put into isolation, spread the "disease". By the way, an additional "irrationality" in the US health care system, this time relating to public health, is the fact that in times of health crisis getting the things necessary to the continued health of those most vulnerable is left up to the market rather than to public medical professionals and public health organisations. All of this means that because the US does not have universal health care, whether of the British and Taiwanese public variety or the German and Swiss private variety, the American public is put at risk. I give you mass irrationality.
The fact is that the US has the highest per capita spending on health care compared to other core postmodern nations, virtually all of who have universal health care systems, and the fact that the US has poorer outcomes--lower longevity rates, higher longevity rates for the rich and lower longevity rates for the poor, higher infant death birthrates, higher numbers of women dying during childbirth, higher numbers of needless deaths because of millions without insurance, deaths or disability from diseases that once seemed wiped out--for instance, shows, how irrational the American health care system is. It shows that not only could millions of dollars be saved by turning the American health care sector from a for-profit one to a non-profit one and by rationalising and streamlining the US health care system, but that millions could be saved and health care improved by establishing a universal health care system in the US.
Will America see the "rational" universal health care light? Perhaps the coronavirus outbreak will be the tipping point allowing Americans to see the "rational" obvious. Perhaps it won't. Humans, after all, are often incredibly "irrational" and millions of Americans are guided by emotions, emotions that are easilly manipulated by demagogues, than by the weight of the empirical evidence. Stay tuned.
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