> The US scores poorly on almost every outcome measure - for
> which life expectancy and infant mortality are very good proxies
> - despite spending massive amounts of money.
Yes, so you've said several times. And it has been that way for a long time. What do you think that Means? Of course, let's not forget that "poorly" is an extremely relative term; if you look at infant mortality from, say, 1970: the US has dropped from about 20/1000 to 7/1000 while Sweden has dropped from 11/1000 to 4/1000 ... even though the US is "lousy" in this measure, it got a LOT better in the last 30 years along with the rest of the world, and it narrowed the gap too. It's still "bad," but the trend is down and narrowing. Similary with life expectancy, the US has gone from about 71 in 1970 to 77; it was "bad" relative to Sweden (75 in 1970; 80 today) then, and still is. But it's still pretty good, and again: the trend is up and narrowing. It's only really Japan that is any different from most of the rich world: and we're not really sure what happened there.
> We spend more public money (Medicare and Medicaid mostly) on
> health care than most other countries' grand total of public
> and private spending (and they have universal coverage).
I don't understand why you keep throwing these statistics out as though they Mean Something. Yes, the US spends more public money on health care than most other countries spend on total universal coverage (which in a lot of cases also means "public money"). So what?
The public part of health care spending in the US hovers around 44%, just less than half of the total. Total health care is what, 15% of GDP in the US? Of, let's remember, the largest GDP in the world? A GDP that is about as big as the sum of the rest of the G-8? A GDP that's 20% of WORLD GDP? Health care spending in the US is more than TOTAL GDP of almost all countries in the world: only France, UK, Germany, India, Japan and China have a TOTAL GDP that's bigger than health care spending in the US.
It should come as no surprise that the US is the 800# gorilla. And it's meaningless: the only thing you can get from this is that the US is huge.
> There's just no rational economic defense of the US health care
> system. It's a disaster.
I don't see anyone here defending it (least of all me); but I do see an awful lot of bad criticism. There's lots to criticize about the US health care system; why focus on the sensational(ly wrong) stuff?
---
Gar writes:
> Well both Canadian and USAian health care is
> overwhelmingly financed by regressive means
Is there anything of note that's financed anywhere in the world by anything other than "overwhelmingly regressive means" ...? Can we name one progressive tax system in the rich world?
> I note that your example of Tenncare:
> A) had no comparison to other nations (including Canada)
> so there is no way to tell if this accounts for any of
> difference between Canadian costs and U.S.
The point I was trying to make was that (yes, anecdotally, but I think it's representative) there's no such thing as "average consumption" ... the variance is so high that it makes the notion of "average dollars per person" meaningless.
> B) was referring to a plan specifically for the poorest of
> the poor. Which means it is not necessarily reflective of costs
> for the majority who are not the poorest of the poor..
In Canada "everyone is poor" -- if you took all the people who _aren't_ eligible for TennCare and put them into it instead of what they have now, my point would be _underscored_ not undone: the variance would increase. In this sense, TennCare is an excellent example to use, and I think if you look at the majority of the state programs you'll see similar things.
> But we know where most of the higher costs come from:
Yes, the total costs are higher in the US. For a long list of reasons. Great. I don't know what it is you think I'm saying that you're attempting to correct, but you haven't said anything new yet. But by al l means, please keep adding to the list of differences between the US and Canada.
/jordan