Reply #8: More than twice as much in most cases...

[warren pease]

All that garbage about mandates, signups, pools, penalties for not having insurance... It's all just sophist bullshit to distract the ill-informed, dummied-down chowder heads from focusing on the outrageous fact that the US is never, ever going to have a decent, just, equitable health care system as long as the corporatists are in power.

As even an opponent of single-payer admits:

In the mockumentary 'Sicko', Michael Moore points out that despite spending the most on health care of any nation ($7,400 per capita), the US ranks near the bottom among industrialized countries and only two spots above Cuba (that spends $251 per capita).

What rankings? In 2000 the World Health Organization came up with rankings for the health care systems of 190 countries.

And maybe the most galling stat of all: A Harvard Medical School study showed that, back in 1999, the US taxpayer shouldered the burden for just under 60 percent of all medical costs nationwide by being forced to fund health care for federal, state and local government employees. That included programs such as the Federal Employees Health Plan and those for state and local employees as well; the VA system; the Cadillac coverage our fine representatives and Senators enjoy (and which they say we can't have); the cost of covering ER expenses for those without insurance; Medicare; and the costs of various state-run Medicaid programs.

That 60 percent represented $2,604 per capita at the time, which means government spending per-person (via tax dollars) on health care in the US was higher than total per capita health care expenditures in any other country in the world – including those with single-payer, universal-access national health care systems.

So we're paying for national health care; we're just not getting it.


wp