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SAN FRANCISCO / Bill Clinton calls U.S. health care 'uneconomical'

SF
Sunday, April 15, 2007

The dire state of the nation's health care system is threatening the country's well-being, former President Bill Clinton told a receptive crowd in San Francisco on Saturday.

'Our health care system is immoral because it doesn't provide health care to everybody,' said Clinton, the keynote speaker at KCBS Health Etc., a daylong symposium at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium. 'It's wildly uneconomical. We pay more than everybody else in the world for less.'

'It is sowing the seeds of its own destruction,' said Clinton, who said health care is one of the top three problems the country faces, along with economic inequality and energy dependence.

Like a patient professor trying to break down a complex issue for his students, Clinton used a plethora of statistics, and a touch of humor, in his indictment of the current state of American health care.

He said the United States spends 16 percent its national income on health care, compared with 11 percent in Canada and Switzerland, the countries with the next highest spending. That gap represents $800 billion a year, he said.

Yet the United States ranks only 37th in the world in overall health care, insures fewer of its citizens, and pays more for its drugs, Clinton said.

Almost a third of U.S. health care spending goes to administrative costs, the highest in the world, he said.

"We're letting the health insurance financing tail wag the health-care dog," he said.