No Need to Speculate

Every time Americans debate health care, they go off into the weeds claiming dreadful things will happen if the other fellow’s policies are followed. They act as if no other country has already solved the problem. You don’t need to speculate! Just ask your friends living in Canada, Britain, Sweden, Germany, the Netherlands or France. The following crucial fact gets ignored in every US health care debate:

The USA spends three times as much per capita on health care as any other developed country, but ranks below all other developed nations in outcomes as measured by IMR (Infant Mortality Rate). The USA ranks #43, two rungs below Cuba, a third world nation.

Why?

• Every other country uses single payer, computerised billing. American hospitals have just as many billing clerks as doctors. They drown in paper dealing with non-standard billing for every insurance company. Armies of clerks are not needed in other countries.
• Americans pay far more for the exact same pharmaceuticals sold in other countries. Why? Pharmaceutical companies bribe American politicians legally and illegally to make rules to let them rip off consumers.
• So many Americans go without health care of any kind. Sick Americans infect everyone else. American streets are as disease-ridden as anything I have seen in the third world, homeless people hacking away with TB (Terabytes).
• Any time anything goes wrong, Americans look about for someone to blame and sue. A medical error is looked on as a lottery jackpot. Other countries protect doctors from being sued but take away their licences. That puts an immediate stop to incompetence. Canceling the licence punishes the doctor, not the insurance company. As a result, everywhere else, doctors don’t have to pay such exorbitant malpractice insurance, which indirectly saves the patient a bundle.
• Americans are reaping the consequences of a cradle to grave junk food diet and sedentary lifestyle.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)