[geeks] just to stir things up, a few predictions

[velociraptor]

On Tue, 19 Oct 2004 13:49:32 -0500, Matthew Braun <geeks at leydenjar.com> wrote:
> Just to address what I believe is your statement that adopting
> socialized medicine would lead to higher taxes, I want to present a few
> statistics:
>         In 2001, at 13.9% the United States had the highest levels of
> expenditure on health as a percentage of GDP of all member states
> (nearly 200) surveyed by the WHO (WHO World Health Report- 2004
> http://www.who.int/entity/whr/2004/annex/topic/en/annex_5_en.pdf)
>         Japan, England, and Germany (who I think are pretty much comparable to
> the US in quality of care) spent, in the same year 8%, 7.6% and 10.8%.
> (However, I know that the governmental bureaucracies have can make
> obtaining care more difficult in those countries)

By the same token, the attitude towards health care,
in my experience, is different there.  Americans expect
their health care providers to give them the "silver bullet"
fix that cures them without lifestyle behavior.  And if those
health care providers can't do it Americans will sue and
chase "specialists" throwing their money at them.

>From the experiences of my European friends with severe
health issues, the system is designed such that it cannot
be abused (because, really, that's what such behavior is)
in the same way--if you don't uphold your end of the health-
care bargain (such as following the anti-rejection regime
if you receive an organ transplant), they will triage you,
so you don't waste further resources of the system.

I don't want to get into a morality argument regarding this
approach, but it's certainly a reflection of the differing 
cultural attitudes.  And ultimately, cultural attitudes are
what inform and drive the happenings in the political and
economic environments.

=Nadine=