Recent federal projections show spending on healthcare will remain pretty much unchanged over the next decade.  The Wall Street Journal reports that new studies show an average 6.3%/year increase is expected as opposed to the 6.1% rate projected prior to the new healthcare bill.  While that does show a slight increase, it’s arguably well within the noise of a ten-year projection.

This study takes some of the wind out of the sails of the Democrats who have been touting that new healthcare programs will reduce the cost of medical care.  But it also deflates Republican arguments that Obamacare will bankrupt businesses and the economy.

Given that the healthcare bill will now insure medical coverage for an additional 9% of Americans at little to no incremental cost, it seems the reality is that these new projections show the 2010 healthcare bill to be a good start.  Yet it also highlights that this is no time to declare victory and walk away.  There will still be 7% of us with no medical coverage, and our per capita costs for healthcare are still more than double that of the next most expensive country.  This is not sustainable.

Ultimately, it is the per capita cost of medical care that is the 800-pound gorilla in the room.  Even granting that we enjoy access to higher levels of care than the rest of the industrialized world (a debatable point in its own right), it can’t be rationally claimed that it’s twice as good.  If we allow that it’s one and a half times as good, that still means there exists 25% of our costs we could and should recover.  That’s an amount which would allow for true universal coverage, and still substantially reduce each of our costs.

If someone were to propose the abolition of public schools such that grade school became a strictly for-profit industry with government subsidies insuring assistance to poor families who couldn’t afford to send their kids to school, the populace would rise in apoplectic rage.  Seniors and childless couples might rejoice that they no longer had to subsidize the education of other people’s children, but a huge number of parents would be financially crippled by 3rd grade tuition bills.  Yet this is exactly the model we pursue today for healthcare.

Consider instead that healthcare was like education.  Everyone is entitled to a basic level.  Those who can afford it may opt for purchasing more, but no one goes without the basics.  For all of those screaming that the Constitution doesn’t guarantee healthcare, they may take solace in being correct.  But they should also recognize it doesn’t guarantee an education.  Yet as a society we’ve made a choice to “socialize” education.

Think about that as your kids climb aboard that public school bus this week.  Would you really be better off if you paid tuition rather than taxes?  Would your kids be better off?  Would society?