The current population of the United States is about 312 million persons. This came from http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html.
The United States used 18,690,000 barrels of oil per day in 2009. This number came from http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/ene_oil_con-energy-oil-consumption.
I am going to estimate oil consumption in America in 2011 to be 20,000,000 barrels of oil per day. This is admittedly a "rough number". I am trying to make conceptual points in the material below. Exactness is not required in order to do so.
The price of oil today is $85.30. This number came from http://www.oil-price.net/.
The cost of oil consumption per day in America is $1,706,000,000 (about one point seven billion dollars).
The cost of oil consumption per week in America is $11,942,000,000 (almost twelve billion dollars).
The cost of oil consumption per 30 day month in America is $51,180,000,000 (about fifty one billion dollars).
The cost of oil consumption per 365 day year in America is $622,690,000,000 (about six hundred and twenty three billion dollars).
The oil consumption cost per person per year in America using a rounded 312 million population count is $1995.
Coal costs about $100 per ton. This number came from http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/20/patriotcoal-idUSL3E7LK1LY20111020.
Coal consumption in the United States is 1,060,000,000 tons used per year. This number came from http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/ene_coa_con-energy-coal-consumption.
The 1,060,000,000 tons of coal used per year in the United States times $100 per ton equals $106,000,000,000 (One hundred and six billion dollars).
The annual cost per capita for coal in America equals about $340 per person.
Natural gas consumption in the United States in 2010 was 24,087,938 million cubic feet. This number came from http://205.254.135.7/dnav/ng/NG_CONS_SUM_DCU_NUS_A.htm.
The cost of natural gas in the United States is $4.27 per thousand cubic feet. This number came from http://205.254.135.24/dnav/ng/ng_pri_sum_dcu_nus_m.htm.
If a thousand cubic feet of natural gas costs $4.27, then a million cubic feet of natural gas costs $4270, which is one thousand times as much as $4.27.
The total natural gas consumption in the United States of roughly 24,000,000 million cubic feet times $4270 per million cubic feet equals about 102 billion dollars.
The annual cost per capita for natural gas in the United States equals about $327 per person.
The total cost for oil, coal, and natural gas use in the United States equals about $2660 per person.
The total Health Care Cost in the U.S. in 2009 was about $2,500,000,000,000 (two point five trillion dollars). This number came from http://articles.latimes.com/2010/feb/04/nation/la-na-healthcare4-2010feb04.
The total Health Care Cost now in America is now running at the rate of $2,700,000,000,000 (two point seven trillion dollars). This number came from a magazine article I read not too long ago.
Total health care spending in America is expected to nearly double to $4.6 trillion dollars in 2020, from $2.6 trillion dollars in 2010.
Health care spending per capita in America is forecast to increase to $13,708 in 2020 from $8,327 in 2010.
The numbers in the above two paragraphs came from http://money.cnn.com/2011/07/28/news/economy/healthcare_spending_forecast/index.htm.
In a magazine article I read not too long ago, they had an even higher number of $8650 per person being spent on health care today in the U.S.
Even using the conservative number in the material above, our current health care cost of $8,327 per person in 2010 is more than three times the total cost of oil, coal, and natural gas use of $2660 per person in the United States.
Our total Health Care Cost in America is about 17.5 percent of GDP.
This total Health Care Cost is headed northward to 20% of GDP within only a matter of few short years.
Then it is headed further northward to 25% of GDP.
This situation continues to get even worse.
What follows is an interesting quote from our own Congressional Budget Office:
CBO projects that without significant changes in policy, total spending for health care will be 31 percent of GDP by 2035 and will increase to 46 percent by 2080.
The above came from http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/102xx/doc10297/chapter2.5.1.shtml.
In case you don't know what GDP means what follows is a definition of GDP from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_domestic_product.
Gross domestic product (GDP) refers to the market value of all final goods and services produced within a country in a given period.
Now let's contrast the above to 1960.
In 1960 there were 189,323,175 million people living in the United States.
The GDP in 1960 was about 520 billion dollars (1960 non-inflation adjusted dollars). This number came from http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&met_y=ny_gdp_mktp_cd&idim=country:USA&dl=en&hl=en&q=what+is+gdp
Our National Health Care Cost was about 5% of GDP in 1960.
Our total Health Care Cost nationwide in 1960 was about 26 billion dollars in "1960 money".
Money was worth a lot more in 1960 than it is today.
Okay, so let us adjust for inflation.
$1.00 in 1960 had the same buying power as $7.46 in 2011. This number came from http://www.dollartimes.com/calculators/inflation.htm.
Twenty six billion dollars of 1960 money is equivalent to about 193 billion dollars today.
In 1960, one hundred and ninety three billion dollars of "inflation adjusted money" covered the entire health care costs of one hundred and eighty nine million Americans.
What this boils down to is that in 1960 Americans were only spending about one thousand dollars of "today's 2011 dollar" per year on health care on a per person basis.
We are now spending over eight times as much on health care on a per person basis as we did in 1960.
By next year it will be almost nine times more.
And we will be spending fourteen times as much on health care in America as we were in 1960 by the year 2020.
For a person in the United States today to only be spending only about $2660 on their entire use of oil, coal, and natural gas, and be spending about $8330 on health care *over three times as much* is nuts!
And for a person in America to be spending over eight times more on health care than they did in 1960 is nuts too!
For all this "great health care" that we get in the United States, health care that costs over eight times what it did in 1960, one in six children is now considered learning impaired (learning disabled is another term).
Something is really wrong with America when so many children are seriously learning impaired.
And something is really wrong with America when our children as a whole rank so low in educational achievement vs. children in so many other countries.
I blame (1) our corrupt Federal Government, (2) the FDA, (3) Big Food (Monsanto, McDonald's, General Mills, Coca Cola, etc.), (4) our our mineral depleted soils, (5) our toxic laden environment, (6) chlorinated and fluoridated water, (7) artificial sweeteners, (8) Big Pharma, (8) vaccines, (9) antibiotics, and (10) the hoax of pharmaceutical medicine.
Of all of the parties and issues listed above, I blame the first three and the last four the most.
Who do you blame? And how can we fix all this?
Allen Darman
Website: http://nutrientscure.wordpress.com/
A Related Blog:
Two Persons That the OWS People's Movement Should Become Aware Of and Why (10/19/2011)
http://nutrientscure.wordpress.com/2011/10/18/two-persons-that-the-ows-peoples-movement-should-become-aware-of-10172011/
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Web address of this blog: http://nutrientscure.wordpress.com/2011/10/21/some-interesting-facts-and-figures-regarding-health-care-and-energy-costs-10212011/
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