07-25-2012, 12:00 AM
(07-24-2012, 05:45 PM)kandrathe Wrote: We can if "health care" is defined with some boundaries. I can't remember the exact source at this moment (I'm rushing off to a meeting in 5 minutes), but it was essentially that the bulk of our care is given to a small fraction of the population, and that most of that is in the final year of a persons life attempting to buy them a few more months. The sad result is that most often the extra care statistically shortens lifespan. We can easily afford health maintenance, and treatment of common chronic or acute illness. What we can't afford is to keep the mentality that we must "save them at any cost", especially when that persons body is all worn out already.
The thing that astounded me when I looked into the WHO stats on per capita health spending was just how out of control healthcare is in the USA compared to other countries. When I last looked (a couple of years ago, before Obamacare) the US was publicly spending more on healthcare per capita than what Australians were spending in the public and private systems combined. When you added in private spending on healthcare the figure was pretty much double. Australia and the US are quite similar demographically when it comes to health, wealth and aging population, which to me suggested that the actual system itself was broken and that the problem was not the amount of dollars thrown into the system.
On the rest of your points I agree wholeheartedly. The only way that the US will ever return to surplus is to raise taxes on the higher income earners and cut spending across the board. The whole Cheney line of "deficits don't matter" is false. Deficits do matter. Our country was able to avoid going into recession during the Financial crisis simply because we could throw money at the problem because we'd been living with surpluses for the prior decade. We are still close to full employment in part because of the years of surplus.
Disarm you with a smile 