RSS Feed MenuRon Brownstein ably sums up the Census Bureau’s final report on the Bush economy.
Bottom line: not good.
On every major measurement, the Census Bureau report shows that the country lost ground during Bush’s two terms. While Bush was in office, the median household income declined, poverty increased, childhood poverty increased even more, and the number of Americans without health insurance spiked.
What went wrong?
In a word: healthcare.
Over the years from 2000 to 2007, the price that employers paid for labor rose by an average of 25% per hour. But the wages received by workers were worth less in 2007 than seven years before. All that extra money paid by employers disappeared into the healthcare system: between 2000 and 2007, the cost of the average insurance policy for a family of four doubled.
Exploding health costs vacuumed up worker incomes. Frustrated workers began telling pollsters the country was on the “wrong track” as early as 2004 – the year that George W. Bush won re-election by the narrowest margin of any re-elected president in U.S. history.
Slowing the growth of health costs is essential to raising wages – and by the way restoring Americans’ faith in the fairness of a free-market economy.
Explaining the impact of health costs on wages is essential to protecting the economic reputation of the last Republican administration and Congress.
If Republicans stick to the line that the US healthcare system works well as is – that it has no important problems that cannot be solved by tort reform – then George W. Bush and the Congresses of 2001-2007 will join Jimmy Carter and Herbert Hoover in the American memory’s hall of economic failures. Recovery from that stigma will demand more than a tea party.
johnmarzan // Sep 16, 2009 at 11:20 pm
blame healthcare for economic crash? why not blame the housing crisis + $140/barrel oil for economic collapse?
sinz54 // Sep 18, 2009 at 1:18 pm
sftor1: Could it be we might have conservatives with us soon to throw out this nonsense we call a health care system, and start over with something that works?
Yes, WITH ONE PROVISO:
NO ONE should be forced into accepting less or worse health care under YOUR proposed system than they currently enjoy.
That means: No long lines and long waits waiting for care; no denial of treatment due to overly expensive Quality of Life Years (QALYs); no long waits for elective surgeries; and no cuts in payment to hospitals. NO PATIENT should have to give up anything they currently have (which for many upscale employees of large corporations includes paid acupuncture and subsidized memberships in Weight Watchers and health clubs).
NOW, go ahead and construct a health care system “that works.”
Lots of luck!
balconesfault // Sep 19, 2009 at 7:37 am
NO PATIENT should have to give up anything they currently have (which for many upscale employees of large corporations includes paid acupuncture and subsidized memberships in Weight Watchers and health clubs).
Sinz, of course, is assuming that the market will bear all of these for those upscale employees forever into the future. But how many layoffs have we read about from those same large corporations just in the last year? Last winter and spring, it seemed that every time we opened the paper it was Company X laying off 300, or Company Y shedding 2,000, or Company Z reducing their workforce by 10,000 employees.
cwillia11 // Sep 20, 2009 at 7:05 pm
Government policy at both the state and federal levels is driving up health care costs. True the Bush administration did very little to remedy the situation but the Democrats are running the show now and what they are up to will drive health care costs up further resulting in the perceived need for direct government management of health care.
Should you, husband, and congress have identical health care as we are being forced to have with Oba // Oct 29, 2011 at 4:00 pm
[...] According to David Frum (special assistant to president, 2001-2), between 2000 and 2007, the cost of the average insurance policy for a family of four doubled.See http://www.frumforum.com/the-bush-econom [...]