Socialized Health Care in the USA

[kandrathe]

As Pat Moynihan once said, you're entitled to your own opinion, but you aren't entitled to your own facts. Look at health care expenditures per capita. The statistics are diligently collected by every developed country. Compare them. Unless you have some funky math for making five thousand less than three thousand, every developed country enjoys cheaper health care than the US does.

I'm not saying that there is not a problem and a disconnect.

It has maintained the populations of Canada, Australia, Europe and New Zealand at lower prices for decades. What more do you want to prove that it more than "sort of" works. It actually works.

I have no doubt that your systems "work", but what I do question is the price you pay, both tangible and intangible. We have a basic disagreement in the purpose of government. I believe the US government was established to keep the citizens free, rather than be the caretaker of society. I want to make ALL the choices I can regarding me, my family, and my property (including my income).

Truth. However, the experience is that, from the Canadian private single payer system, to the British socialism-on-the-cheap NHS, to the Norwegian cradle-to-grave, they're all cheaper than the current American system by a country mile. Take your pick of flavours, and unless you think that the American government has some special distinction as being uniquely incompetent, it ought to at least save you a bundle of money, both on taxes and insurance.

I'm not disagreeing on it's brokenness, only on the remedy. You are saying... "Hey, do what we do, it works." To which I am replying, "I see, but I don't want to be a socialist who pays 60% of my income to a nanny state. I want to reform the free market, and get government out of the way."

Yes, during the *democratic primary*. We're now a couple years past that, and dealing with actual proposals before the actual congress, which have a very different cast than ideas by, of, and for Democrats exclusively.

How has the "public option" plan of the democrats changed since the primary? The demoplan was written and has been floated around and refined for the last two years.

Or, visually, THIS is your current health care system, in context.

I'm uncertain to how they are measuring costs. Is this a measure of health care costs, or health insurance costs? How does it factor in the 50% socialist + 50 % private system of the US? Is it comparing the same brain surgery operation across nations? The one thing that is clear from the graph is, that whatever the jagged line is, it does not have any correlation to life expectancy.

Again, its not so simple to just point at a graph and say, "See!"

The council on foreign relations has an interesting analysis which goes into great depth -- Healthcare Costs and U.S. Competitiveness.

It says what your graph says, that costs are higher. But also what I said above, for example, "[Elizabeth Olmstead Teisberg, a professor at the University of Virginia's Darden School of Business], in an interview, said part of the reason for this disconnect is that companies have traditionally focused their attentions strictly on direct costs rather than the root cause of the costs: poor health. Teisberg cites internal corporate reports that estimate the combined costs of these additional expenses to be two-and-a-half to three times higher than the direct costs of coverage."

We pay more because our system is fractured by laws into a complicated mess of public and private plans that do not mesh, and do not focus on "HEALTH" as an outcome. Only in the US can you get medical treatment to offset your poor health as a result of your 32 fast food meals in a week.

If we focus on minimizing the need for health care, the supply of care will increase and the overall costs will drop. I would also expect to see a dramatic rise in life expectancy and reduction in infant mortality. We are a sick society, mostly by our own bad choices.