While discussing the health care bill George Will claims that we're getting richer in the United States and that's one reason health care costs are going to go up. I'd love to know who he's talking about. Maybe his rich buddies because if he's talking about the general population of the United States, just the opposite is true. Sadly no one was allowed to follow up as it looked like Paul Krugman wanted to since the host decided to change the subject right after Cokie Roberts managed to get a few words in.
A Decade With No Income Gains:
The typical American household made less money last year than the typical household made a full decade ago.
To me, that’s the big news from the Census Bureau’s annual report on income, poverty and health insurance, which was released this morning. Median household fell to $50,303 last year, from $52,163 in 2007. In 1998, median income was $51,295. All these numbers are adjusted for inflation.
In the four decades that the Census Bureau has been tracking household income, there has never before been a full decade in which median income failed to rise. (The previous record was seven years, ending in 1985.) Other Census data suggest that it also never happened between the late 1940s and the late 1960s. So it doesn’t seem to have happened since at least the 1930s. Read on...
Transcript via ABC News:
WILL: Can I say something that Paul and I might actually agree on?
VARGAS: Sure.
WILL: Twenty years from now, the country is going to be spending a larger portion of its GDP on health care than it is now for three reasons. We're getting older, and as we age, we get more chronic diseases that interact with one another. Second, we're getting richer; we can afford to buy more medicine. And, third, medicine is becoming more competent. Therefore, we're going to spend more on health care.
KRUGMAN: But there's a...
ROBERTS: The other thing is, you know, the health care industry is the biggest employer in most of our cities now. So when -- when the speaker talks about a job creation bill...
VARGAS: A jobs bill, exactly.
ROBERTS: ... it's true.
VARGAS: Let's shift a little bit to Charlie Rangel...
