Socialized Health Care in the USA

[Jester]

Lower life expectancy and slightly higher infant mortality (6/1000 vs 3/1000) does not correlate to less health care, or poorer health care.

Read that sentence over a couple times. Are you seriously claiming that there is no correlation between the two most obvious health care outcomes and the quality of health care? Because that would be crazy.

The US infant mortality statistics are skewed due to two factors, a) more attempts to save midterm premature births andB)the larger influx of emigrants than any other nation in the world.

I highly doubt that US doctors attempt to save so many more preterm babies than their Canadian, Australian, New Zealander or European counterparts that it doubled your infant mortality rate.

As for immigration, I'm sure that plays a role, but as part of a larger picture: you have very high inequality for a developed country, and no public health care! So, the worst off get worse nutrition, have poorer health care, and their babies are therefore at greater risk when they're preterm. Critically, *this is a problem that public health care fixes.*

People in the US are less healthy, but that might be because we've automated, or shipped away all our strenuous labor and can't pull ourselves away from the idiot box to exercise.

Follow the argument. This is about comparing the US to other OECD countries which have experienced the same automation, the same "shipping away" of strenuous labour, and mostly the same move to a sedentary culture. This isn't just bicycle-loving Holland. This is Britain, Canada, Australia, countries every bit as fat 'n lazy as the US.

Let's see 4 years of pre-med, plus 4 years med school, then barely paid residency to earn the same as an engineer who gets a degree in 4 years. I think I'll go the engineer route and cut down the student loans, and the 16 hour shifts.

How then do you explain that single-payer Europe has far more doctors per capita than the market USA? There isn't a shortage there.

Nursing Shortage Expected To Grow Annually Through 2016, According To U.S. Bureau Of Labor Statistics

Economists long ago figured out the secret of ending a worker shortage: more carrots. If you're not giving enough incentive to work, you get less workers. This is true in any system, capitalist or socialist.

-Jester