July 18, 2019
The New York Times ran a piece warning retirees thinking of moving overseas that Medicare will not cover their medical expenses in other countries. This is true, but the NYT piece never once pointed out that this is conscious policy, not something that just happened.
Readers of the paper may recall that it reports on trade agreements all the time. These trade agreements cover a wide range of issues, including things like enforcing patent and copyright monopolies and rules on Internet commerce and privacy.
If anyone in the United States in a position of power cared, then it would be possible to include transferring Medicare payments to other countries, to allow people to buy into other nations’ health care system on the list of topics being negotiated. This doesn’t happen because, unlike access to cheap labor for manufactured goods, there is no one in power who wants to make it easier for people in the United States to take advantage of lower cost and more efficient health care systems elsewhere.
While such a policy could potentially save the U.S. government an enormous amount of money on Medicare (costs in other rich countries average less than half as much per person), the health care industry would scream bloody murder if any politician attempted to implement free trade in health care services. “Free trade,” as it is conventionally used in U.S. policy debates, just means removing barriers that protect less educated workers from foreign competition.
The New York Times, like other mainstream publications will not even allow free trade to be discussed in its pages in contexts where it might hurt the interests of the wealthy.
Comments