OMAHA — “The tax system is not crippling our business around the world.”
That was Warren E. Buffett, the chairman and chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway, over
the weekend at the company’s annual meeting, known as “Woodstock for capitalists.”
Mr. Buffett, in a remarkably blunt and pointed remark, implicitly rebuked his fellow chief executives,
who have been lobbying the Trump administration and Washington lawmakers to lower corporate taxes.
Mr. Buffett said our global competitiveness had fallen largely
because our businesses were paying far more for health care — a tax by another name — than those in other countries.
“Medical costs are the tapeworm of American economic competitiveness,” Mr. Buffett said, using a metaphor
he has employed in the past to describe the insidious and parasitic costs of our health care system.
Under his plan, which Mr. Buffett agrees with, the United States would enact a sort of universal type of coverage for all citizens — perhaps along the lines of the Medicaid system — with an opt-out provision
that would allow the wealthy to still get concierge medicine.
“If you go back to 1960 or thereabouts, corporate taxes were about 4 percent of G. D.P.,” Mr. Buffett said.
In truth, Mr. Buffett said, a specter much more sinister than corporate taxes is looming over American businesses: health care costs.
As a percentage of our gross domestic product, the cost of maintaining our American health care system — hospitals, H. M.O.s,
doctor visits, prescription drugs, medical devices, insurance companies, Medicare, Medicaid — is rising at an alarming rate.
