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

[Charles Shannon Hendrix]

Tue, 19 Oct 2004 @ 13:49 -0500, Matthew Braun said:

> 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%. 

Ah yes, another example of how to lie with statistics.

The problem with these stats is they don't account for exactly what you
are getting and what is available.

For example, if you can get drugA in the UK, and in the US you can get
A, B, and C, then of course expenditures are going to be higher in the
US.

You can't spend money on what isn't there, which is the primary reason a
lot of nations have lower health expenses.

In fact, the US system became so good, that abuse of it is now rampant,
which is large part of the costs, and yet another thing your stats don't
take into account.

Finally, the USA often subsidizes much of the rest of the world by
having higher drug and treatment prices than what is allowed in many
other countries.

> So Japan has a lower total tax burden (although I suspect this may be 
> to outrageously generous corporate tax breaks) yet it manages to have a 
> health care system which I believe is on par with the US (though 
> they're overall far healthier than Americans, 

Far better?  No, definitely not.  In fact, in some cases their health is
worse, far worse.  Japan still has pollution levels which are no longer
legal in the USA, for example.

> Now, I know: "there are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and
> statistics" and I'm not a professional, but the numbers suggest to me
> that socialized medicine can be implemented without causing an undue
> tax burden for the citizenry.

Then why hasn't it worked anywhere else without very high taxes, both
direct and indirect?

I mean, I'd really love to believe in some kind of safety net, but
everyone I know in the countries you listed as better complain all the
time about their taxes, their screwed up system, and the difficulty they
fact in getting help.

I think I'm willing to say that yes, it could work.  However, history
seems to indidate that we will not take the steps to actually make that
happen.  There are too many people who jump in and feed off the system
and corrupt it.

If we could fix that, then our government would be fixed too.

-- 
shannon "AT" widomaker.com -- ["I want this Perl software checked for
viruses.  Use Norton Antivirus." -- Charlie Kirkpatrick]