Your Opinion: Little to show, despite massive health spending

Dear Editor:

How much good do we get from our nanny state federal government? Just in the areas of health and nutrition we pay taxes to support a Surgeon General, an Office of Child Support Enforcement, a National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect, an Office of Head Start, an Office of Community Services, an Office of Family Assistance, a President's Committee for People with Intellectual Disabilities, an Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the Centers for disease Control and Prevention, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health (which includes 29 federal health organizations), the Public Health Service, a Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, and the list goes on and on. (Why isn't the State of Missouri handling the duties of most of these "Offices"?)

With the myriad of health services we fund one would think that our health, and our ability to work to support ourselves, would show substantial, continual improvement.

From 1975-85 there were fewer than 20 million people on Medicaid, by 2017 the number was over 73 million. From 1975-85 unemployment ranged from 5.6 percent to 10.8 percent. In 2017 it averaged less than 4.4 percent. From 1980 to 2016 median household income for those with incomes in the lower 40 percent rose an inflation adjusted 13.7 percent.

In 1985 2.2 percent of working age adults were collecting Social Security disability benefits, by 2011 the number had grown to 4.7 percent.

Unemployment is lower than it was 40 years ago, median household income for those with incomes in the lower 40 percent has increased and yet, even with all the government "help," the result is three times as many people on Medicaid and the percentage of disabled working age people has more than doubled. In addition, this year our life expectancy actually decreased!

The World Bank ranks nations health expenditures by percentage of GDP. For 2014 the U.S. ranked at the top of the table by spending 17.1 percent of our GDP on health care. Several other nations at the top of the list were Sweden at 11.9 percent, Switzerland at 11.7 percent and France at 11.5 percent. In terms of life expectancy Sweden ranks 10th, Switzerland 4th, France comes in at 11th; while the U.S. is ranked 43rd.