SOUNDING OFF:

In 2007, 17% of all money spent (GDP) in the United States each year — $2.4 trillion — went to health care. And 31% of that went to administering health care — not to doctors, nurses, labs, medicine, wheelchairs or comfort for the afflicted.

Universal coverage countries all spend less than 10% of their GDP on health care.

With a continuation of the health-care disaster Americans have now, we will spend 20% of our GDP within 10 years.

By the end of 2009, almost $1 trillion of our national income will go to administrators who manage or supervise the execution, use or conduct of health care: chief executives, claims administrators, etc.

Meanwhile, more than 75 million American adults, 42% of the younger-than-65 population, had either no insurance or inadequate insurance in 2007, the latter involves spending some 10% of their income on health-care expenses.

Of course, this doesn’t even consider the specter of millions who are threatened with financial disaster given a catastrophic illness. The real threat of sinking into bankruptcy due to accident or illness can strangle any opportunity for the middle class, and especially the poor.

In spite of the Medicare prescription program, 40% of seniors ignore the prescriptions they are given because of cost, adverse effects or poor doctor-patient communication. A full 26% of seniors said they didn’t bother to refill their prescriptions, they skipped doses, or they took smaller doses because of costs. One-third of seniors reported an out-of-pocket cost of $100 or more per month.

In too many cases, seniors with modest retirement incomes have fallen prey to Republican lobbyist-beholden legislators who in 2003 ramrodded through a shoddy Medicare prescription program, one that allowed drug prices to go through the roof while poor seniors decide whether to eat or buy overpriced drugs.

Perhaps many of us have heard these facts and these statistics before. We have been manipulated, lied to and used so many times that we stand flat-footed with our hands in the air saying, “Well, what can we do?”

Even the seemingly long-shot election of President Barack Obama has many of us doubtful that much will be done to truly reform the health-care mess.

His campaign assured universal healthcare coverage, but the prospect for cost-effective health-care relief is rather grim.

The proposed mandates for all Americans to purchase private, for-profit health-insurance (or buy into a public pool that will be weakened by the insurance interests) is being sold to us as reform.

My suspicion is that it’s a sell-out to the health-insurance industry and though it will probably increase coverage, it will likely keep costs high.

With clamorous propaganda campaigns when they are threatened and a continual denigration of government plans, the health-care industry will continue to make war against us.

It did just that more than 10 years ago against the Clinton plan. Democrat leaders still cringe when others mention major universal health-care reform, and Republicans still see the so-called Hillary Clinton plan as their silver bullet.

In the health-care industry’s defense, Republican Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa has assured anyone who will listen that there’s a big difference between the Hillary Clinton plans of years gone by and the Obama plan now — “He [Obama] will stick to his guns on a private-public mix [for insurance].”

Grassley goes on to say that everyone knows you get over-utilization when you have “gold-plated” plans. The implication is always that if you give access to care then millions of us will clamor to sit in doctors’ offices and get procedures and tests done simply because we have the means to do so.

Maybe Obama is being cautious and thinks he can eventually step into a universal one-payer health-care plan.

My hunch is that it is manure that he and the rest of us are stepping into, and the well-heeled health-care industry and drug companies will maintain a steady supply of it, this while chants of socialized medicine and tax-and-spend are endlessly repeated on conservative and corporate air waves.

JIM HOOVER lives in Huntington Beach.