It is really an interesting statistic depending on how you spin it. That means 50 million people tend to get healthcare without paying anything. Sometimes it comes from government run health facilities. Often times they get care and just decide not to pay the bills. We have no debtor's prisons for such things. (Nor am I suggesting that we should)
Someone pays. Thats the funny thing, you pay 2 or 3x more
per capita than other countries while only covering part of your population. The cost per insured person is therefore closer to 4x what other industrial nations pay, yet you get worse healthcare for that. You have to be some ideologue with blinders on to defend the US system when all the numbers show so clearly its not just bad, its
horribly inefficient.
So if you are suggesting that more people in the use should be responsible for paying for their healthcare costs, I couldn't agree more. It would bring the overhead down substantially for those now paying the bills. However, nothing proposed so far aims to make this imbalance better. That is the really sad thing.
No matter how you slice it, or how you spread the cost, the US system is ridiculously expensive while offering worse quality.
Out of 191 countries on the planet. "The United States ranked last when compared to six other countries -- Britain, Canada, Germany, Netherlands, Australia and New Zealand, the Commonwealth Fund report found."
Okay, so you probably do better than Zimbabwe. Is that your benchmark? Try Cuba.
Come on New Zealand had 4 million people. The Netherlands has 16 million. California and the US are pushing those respective numbers in illegal immigrants alone.
So what, the bigger the scale, the more efficient you could make it. Its
harder to get costs down on small scale, a country like the Netherlands has no leverage over pharmaceutical companies compared to the US. If you can do it on a scale as small as that, surely you could do it on a state level in the US?
But the study is clear about one thing, we are fat and nobody likes to go to the doctor. We are fat because we are very efficient and productive in feeding ourselves. Even our poor are fat. Our food tends to be good, cheep, and restaurant service is fast. Even Europeans get fat when they come here. Should we take better care of ourselves? Yes we should.
Yeah those cliches again. While they may have some truth, they dont explain the results. Read the article. US smokes a whole lot less than europeans, and you are younger. I also dont think your babies are born fat, so how do you explain child mortality?
Anyway, its your health and your tax dollars. If you are happy spending 3x more for worse quality just so you dont have to call something "socialist", then thats your choice. Im sure happy with my healthcare system and I dont care what you call it.