There is no argument -- including the "% of GDP claim" -- that justifies the further enslavement of doctors and healthcare providers and massive looting of Americans, all for purposes of granting unearned health care benefits to Democratic voters.
If someone discovered that we were spending much more than the rest of the world for cotton clothing, no one would entertain the notion that this would justify a return to the chattel slavery of the 19th century southern U.S. states.
The real statistic that deserves investigation is not how our medical spending stacks up against the rest of the world -- it's how our spending has exploded since the inception of the FDA, Medicare, Medicaid, S-CHIP, mandatory Emergency room treatments, state insurance mandates, HIPPA, the GMPs, etc.
The investigation would show a classic statist pincer movement: Destroy a given (mostly) free market by driving up demand while simultaneously reducing/eliminating competition and imposing crippling restrictions on supply -- then point to the inevitable rise in prices and scream, "See! The free market doesn't work!"
Whether Obama will get away with his claim that he can walk on water and heal the sick, free of charge, if only we will surrender the last vestiges of our freedom, remains to be seen. That he can deliver that promise with a straight face is quite an achievement in the history of deception.
Seth
· 3 months ago
Great comment Michael. I agree.
One problem is that their definition of the free market is slightly different. Those distrusting of the free market think free market only means privately owned or profit driven. They don't realize other important characteristics of the free market, like the freedom to choose and make value-based decisions using your own resources.
When someone blames the free market or says it failed, I usually ask for their definition of 'free market'.
vidyohs
· 3 months ago
Good post Michael.
Pauld
· 3 months ago
Regarding health care costs: The U.S. spends a great deal of money on health care items that are related to quality of life but not necessarily longevity. For example, several years ago my teenage daughter was prescribed a medication for acne that cost several thousand dollars a year. All of my kinds have had braces. My wife is prescribed a variety of medications for her skin. My son incurred significant medical bills related to a sport's injury and follow up physical therapy. None of these expenses effect life expectancy. I would be curious how these types of expenses vary by country.
vikingvista
· 3 months ago
And how about measures of delays in satisfying health care wants?
MWG
· 3 months ago
I love it when people bring up life expectancy in the healthcare debate as it is perhaps the easiest myth to debunk.
Ken Willis
· 3 months ago
I do not believe that the 7.3 per hundred thousand murder rate in the U.S. is eight time higher than France. That would make France's homicide rate less than 1 per 100,000. That's a lie.
DonBoudreaux
· 3 months ago
Good catch by Ken Willis. The data that I found in a quick Google search are from 2004. In that year the homicide rate in France, per 100,000 persons, was 1.64 -- which puts the U.S homicide rate at about 4.5 time higher than that of France.
Perhaps more recent data from France show that the homicide rate there has fallen substantially, but, like Mr. Willis, I doubt that it has fallen by enough to make it only one-eighth that of the U.S.
DonBoudreaux
· 3 months ago
P.S. The data I mention in my previous comment are here:
Exactly. You can also throw demographics in there. The US state with the highest life expectancy -- Hawaii at around 83 I believe -- also has the highest percentage of Asian Americans, who tend to live longer.
Norway and North Dakota, the state with the most Norwegian Americans, have almost identical life expectancy rates.
"Williamsburg"? Based on the fact that it's in the WaPo, I'm tempted to think they mean Williamsburg, VA. However, Williamsburg, Brooklyn has a much larger population.
Seth
· 3 months ago
I believe Thomas Sowell pointed out a few weeks ago that Mormons have a life expectancy several years longer than the rest of the U.S. population. Great example. Most people understand that factors other than health care contribute to that stat.
spencer
· 3 months ago
OK, I'll buy that US life expectancy is higher than in France. But it still comes down to the point that we pay 50% to get essentially the same results.
You are defending the most wasteful and inefficient system in the world.
MichaelSmith
· 3 months ago
You are defending the most wasteful and inefficient system in the world.
What do you expect to happen to a market when:
1) Roughly 50% of all the market's participants on the purchasing side are relieved of any financial responsibility for their purchases, thereby destroying any incentive to shop for the best value for the dollars being spent or to consider the most cost-effective way of dealing with their condition -- and also thereby reducing any incentive to compete among doctors and hospitals.
2) The agency -- Medicare and Medicaid -- that assumes the financial responsibility for this 50% has access to unlimited government funds (i.e. taxpayer dollars or government debt) and thus has no incentive to police for fraud -- no incentive to care what anything costs -- and no incentive to tole.
3) That same agency -- though it has no actual incentive to police for fraud or to care what anything wants -- is nonetheless run by power-hungry bureaucrats who, in the name of “cost control”, push off on the providers (the doctors) over 130,000 pages of Medicare rules and regulations -- rules so onerous and complicated that doctors that accept Medicare patients report that they must spend at least ONE FULL DAY per week on nothing but Medicare paperwork and must employ, on average, two additional clerical assistance to help in complying with those rules.
4) Another agency, state governments, gives in to special interest lobbying and forces ALL insurance policies sold by insurance companies in that state to include benefits such as alcohol rehabilitation programs, mental health programs, maternity benefits, etc, and demands that ALL such policies are sold at the same price -- which means that those that want these benefits get them primarily at the expense of those who don’t want them.
And if you think you can just buy a cheaper policy from another state -- a policy that is cheaper because it doesn’t contain certain benefits you know you’ll never use -- well, tough luck, because the states with these mandates generally have laws prohibiting you from purchasing from other states.
5) Another agency, the FDA, adds millions to the costs of new drugs by spending years approving drugs after drug companies have already spent years on double-blind studies proving the drugs work.
6) That same agency -- which has zero experience in manufacturing and generally employs people that know nothing about manufacturing -- nevertheless promulgates a vast set of regulations known as "Good Manufacturing Practices" that forces those manufacturing medical devices to create thousands of pages of written procedures, audits, etc., thereby driving up the costs of all manner of medical devices.
This massive set of regulations, in addition to driving up the costs of existing manufacturers, also constitutes a huge “barrier to entry” to any new firms that might wish to compete with existing firms, thereby reducing the competition in the field of medical device production.
7) Still yet another agency -- the tort court system and the trial lawyers -- forces doctors to carry malpractice insurance policies whose premiums may exceed $100, 000 a year -- as well as forcing doctors to run numerous medical tests not because they think the patient needs it or has asked for it, but simply to practice what is known as “defensive medicine”.
If you think the economic effect of this tort system is small, ask yourself why the trial lawyer’s professional groups give millions in campaign contributions every election to Democrats sympathetic to the current tort rules.
8) Still yet another agency, the Federal Reserve, continuously inflates a fiat currency thereby guaranteeing an ongoing, constant decrease in the value of everyone’s dollars.
How, in the face of this onslaught, can you expect anything BUT rapidly rising costs?
And why on earth -- in the face of all the evidence that these government interventions are economically disastrous and unsustainable -- would anyone think we can put 40 million more people into the system at no additional cost?
How is more of the same poison going to make us well instead of killing us off?
vidyohs
· 3 months ago
Michael,
You are offering salt and protein to Spencer when he clearly wants sugar and meringue.
Obama good, Free markets bad.
vidyohs
· 3 months ago
Spencer,
Again you show up not to do much more than throw darts, useless idiot shit.
Tell me sir, is the healthcare inefficient, or is it the government dictated payment and paperwork?
I have had three operations here in Houston in the last 20 years, all three were conducted in different hospitals by different surgeons, and all three were examples of efficiency and good results.
I am willing to bet my next months earnings that the dominant inefficiency or waste in our health care system is that which is introduced by government dictate.
But, then I am generally more willing to trust the guy I pay than the guy you vote for.
MWG
· 3 months ago
I don't see the Prof.'s comments as a defense of the status quo. It's more of a defense against those who would have our system be more like the French "system".
I think the question that needs to be answered is why we pay 50% more than countries like France? That's where the debate should be focused.
giving the U.S. a murder rate of 4.1 in 2008. If France's murder rate was 1.64 in 2004 [I believe it was higher than that in 2008, closer to 2.0], then the U.S. murder rate in 2008 is 2.5 times that of France in 2004. If I am correct about France's 2008 murder rate, the U.S. rate is roughly twice that of France.
The problems that need to be recognized in comparing homicide rates from one country to another are numerous. For example, out of the 14,180 Americans in 2008 who became murder victims, 6,782 (47%) were African Americans. Source: FBI Website, above..
This is off the topic of life expectancy but it does show that comparing any statistic between the U.S. and other countries has problems of its own. Other countries have their own way of recording [or not recording] data and it is not always easy for us to track how they do it.
I know something from my own personal experience that admittedly is not scientific. I know that the Paris subway is sometimes a very dangerous place.
johndewey
· 3 months ago
I think Don referred to homicides, not murders, in his post. I don't believe the two statistics are the same.
The Center for Disease Control, provide these numbers for U.S. homicides in the year 2006, the most recent year avalable at their website:
Number of deaths: 18,573 Deaths per 100,000 population: 6.2
Can you provide a link, Mr. Willis, showing homicide rates in France that will support your data?
johndewey
· 3 months ago
The Free Dictionary explains that the word "homicide" is broader in scope than the word "murder":
"Murder is a form of criminal homicide; other forms of homicide might not constitute criminal acts. These homicides are regarded as justified or excusable. ... The intent of the killer usually determines whether a criminal homicide is classified as murder or Manslaughter and at what degree. ...Modern statutes generally divide criminal homicide into two broad categories: murder and manslaughter. Murder is usually further divided into the first degree, which typically involves a premeditated intent to kill, and the second degree, which typically does not involve a premeditated intent to kill. Manslaughter typically involves an unintentional killing that resulted from a person's criminal negligence or reckless disregard for human life."
eduguy
· 3 months ago
Sorry, but you have it wrong, as many have questioned the basic methodology used by the authors in adjusting the expected life numbers. The OECD itself has expressly responded to the claim in "OECD Economic Surveys: United States 2008", p. 137 (http://tinyurl.com/mt3g76): "It has been claimed (Ohsfeld and Schneider, 2006) that adjusting for the higher death rate from accident or injury in the United States over 1980-99 than the OECD average would increase US life expectancy at birth from 18th of of 29 OECD countries to the highest. In fact, what the panel regression estimated by these authors shows is that predicted life expectancy at birth based on US GDP per capita and OECD average death rates from these causes is the highest in the OECD. The adjustment for the gap in injury death rates between the United States and OECD average alone only increases life expectancy at birth marginally, from 19th on average among 29 countries over 1980-99 to 17th. Hence, the high ranking of adjusted life expectancy mainly reflects high US GDP per capita, not the effects of unusually high death rates from accident and injury."
eduguy
· 3 months ago
continued: “In other words, the figures in Table 1-5 are not U.S. life expectancies adjusted for fatal injuries, but rather a model that assumes that both the relationship of life expectancy to per capita GDP and injuries in the U.S. follow OECD trends. That is - they are falsely giving the U.S. credit for having the same basic life expectancy as other other high GDP OECD countries, when in fact it is markedly lower. Commenter Guest at http://angrybear.blogspot.com/2009/07/per-capit...
politicalcalcs
· 3 months ago
For those who like to see the data, here's a post with Ohsfeldt's and Schneider's standardized life expectancies.
politicalcalcs
· 3 months ago
Picking up spencer's comment:
OK, I'll buy that US life expectancy is higher than in France. But it still comes down to the point that we pay 50% to get essentially the same results.
You are defending the most wasteful and inefficient system in the world.
What the U.S. pays for its health care compared to other nations is pretty much right in line with the relationship that exists between health expenditures per capita and GDP per capita. France (for example) pays much less because that level of spending is consistent with their much lower level of GDP per capita.
Other nations, meanwhile, actively suppress the amount of their health care spending by limiting its availability (Canada, UK, etc.), which should not ever be mistaken for efficiency. Continually high capacity utilization rates for medical facilities in these countries are a confirmation of chronic underinvestment in critical resources.
DrT1
· 3 months ago
There is an addition reason (besides homicides and traffic accidents) for our lower life expectancy: we try much harder than most nations to save extremely premature babies. If the effort fails, that counts as infant mortality in the US. Most other nations count that as a stillbirth.
The five-year survival data for cancers is a flawed measure. We screen for cancers more than almost any other nation. (Japan, for some cancers, screens very intensely.) When you screen more, you find more cancers at an early stage. If a typical cancer kills in seven years, and we pick it up at year one, then almost everyone is alive five years later. If French physicians pick it up at year three, nearly everyone is dead five years later. Early detection only makes a difference when early treatment improves survival. That's true of some cancers, but not all cancers. In cases where it isn't true, our diligent screening added extra costs, extra years of knowing you have cancer, and no improvement in outcome.
vidyohs
· 3 months ago
BTW,
September 25, 2009 Categories: Senate Ensign receives handwritten confirmation
This doesn't happen often enough.
Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) received a handwritten note Thursday from Joint Committee on Taxation Chief of Staff Tom Barthold confirming the penalty for failing to pay the up to $1,900 fee for not buying health insurance.
Violators could be charged with a misdemeanor and could face up to a year in jail or a $25,000 penalty, Barthold wrote on JCT letterhead. He signed it "Sincerely, Thomas A. Barthold."
The note was a follow-up to Ensign's questioning at the markup.
OBAMA-Care, anyone?
MichaelSmith
· 3 months ago
For years and years I've listened to liberals complain about the "injustice" of having 40 million "uninsured" Americans -- with the implication (if not the explicit claim) that being "uninsured" means being "denied" healthcare.
And now that liberals and their leftist allies have control of both houses of Congress and the Executive Branch, what is their proposed solution to this terrible injustice? Their solution is to put a gun to the head of all the uninsured and FORCE them to purchase insurance, under threat of fine or jail time if they do not!
And the liberals are just fine with this "solution"! Oh, sure, they demand a "public option" to reduce the cost of buying this insurance-at-gunpoint, but that's just window dressing, just a sugarcoating to entice Americans to swallow this poison pill.
This approach is the essence of fascism: the pretense of private property is maintained -- your money is not seized outright by the government -- but the government has totalitarian power to force you to spend it as the government wants.
Obama is a power-lusting fascist with no absolutely no respect for our rights or our liberties. I wonder how many of those that voted for him knew what they were getting.
Gil
· 3 months ago
So this guy is saying is that Americans should live as long as the French but end up dying from car accidents and murders? In other words, Americans are greater risk-takers than the Frenchs which is what you'd expect when it is a more entrepreneurial nation than France.
vikingvista
· 3 months ago
Americans drive more miles than Europeans. America is a big spread out country, and daily commutes, entertainment excursions, vacations, and visiting relatives entail much more driving than for Europeans. In addition, government-imposed driving costs in Europe are far higher than in the US, creating a significant disincentive to drive.
I haven't seen the data, but I would think Canadians would be similar in that regard to Americans. But Canadian health care is so much inferior to much of Europe, not to mention the US, that it is unlikely to be an important confounding factor.
Name
· 3 months ago
Although I agree that the naive life-expectancy argument in favor of health care reform is fatally flawed, the precise claim of Ohsfeldt and Schneider appears to be a little misleading... http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2009/08/25/violence...
vikingvista
· 3 months ago
Don't miss the bigger picture.
The statistical arguments against the quality of health care in the US almost without exception deliberately avoid using ACTUAL measures of health care quality, even when such data are available. They don't even attempt to control for obvious strong confounders like genetic predispositions. There is nothing wrong with the OECD computing life expectancies for various countries. However, it is extraordinarily unprofessional and ideological for them to then claim that it is even an attempted measure of health care quality.
If you want to determine the relative quality of US health care, then I recommend you look through the medical literature for treatment outcomes. Such data are not easy to find in a form to compare across national boundaries, and there is no single measure of quality, but you quickly accumulate an impression that from premature birth survival rates, to treated cancer survival, to speed of diagnosis and treatment of morbid conditions, to heart disease, that the quality of health care in the US is incomparable.
Health care is a relatively small (but much valued) contributor to health, so measures of health as proxies to health care, are sophistic devices.
All Comments
If someone discovered that we were spending much more than the rest of the world for cotton clothing, no one would entertain the notion that this would justify a return to the chattel slavery of the 19th century southern U.S. states.
The real statistic that deserves investigation is not how our medical spending stacks up against the rest of the world -- it's how our spending has exploded since the inception of the FDA, Medicare, Medicaid, S-CHIP, mandatory Emergency room treatments, state insurance mandates, HIPPA, the GMPs, etc.
The investigation would show a classic statist pincer movement: Destroy a given (mostly) free market by driving up demand while simultaneously reducing/eliminating competition and imposing crippling restrictions on supply -- then point to the inevitable rise in prices and scream, "See! The free market doesn't work!"
Whether Obama will get away with his claim that he can walk on water and heal the sick, free of charge, if only we will surrender the last vestiges of our freedom, remains to be seen. That he can deliver that promise with a straight face is quite an achievement in the history of deception.
One problem is that their definition of the free market is slightly different. Those distrusting of the free market think free market only means privately owned or profit driven. They don't realize other important characteristics of the free market, like the freedom to choose and make value-based decisions using your own resources.
When someone blames the free market or says it failed, I usually ask for their definition of 'free market'.
Perhaps more recent data from France show that the homicide rate there has fallen substantially, but, like Mr. Willis, I doubt that it has fallen by enough to make it only one-eighth that of the U.S.
http://www.data360.org/dataset.aspx?Data_Set_Id...
Norway and North Dakota, the state with the most Norwegian Americans, have almost identical life expectancy rates.
Some related thoughts of mine:
http://togetrichisglorious.blogspot.com/2009/09...
http://togetrichisglorious.blogspot.com/2009/07...
http://togetrichisglorious.blogspot.com/2009/05...
You are defending the most wasteful and inefficient system in the world.
What do you expect to happen to a market when:
1) Roughly 50% of all the market's participants on the purchasing side are relieved of any financial responsibility for their purchases, thereby destroying any incentive to shop for the best value for the dollars being spent or to consider the most cost-effective way of dealing with their condition -- and also thereby reducing any incentive to compete among doctors and hospitals.
2) The agency -- Medicare and Medicaid -- that assumes the financial responsibility for this 50% has access to unlimited government funds (i.e. taxpayer dollars or government debt) and thus has no incentive to police for fraud -- no incentive to care what anything costs -- and no incentive to tole.
3) That same agency -- though it has no actual incentive to police for fraud or to care what anything wants -- is nonetheless run by power-hungry bureaucrats who, in the name of “cost control”, push off on the providers (the doctors) over 130,000 pages of Medicare rules and regulations -- rules so onerous and complicated that doctors that accept Medicare patients report that they must spend at least ONE FULL DAY per week on nothing but Medicare paperwork and must employ, on average, two additional clerical assistance to help in complying with those rules.
4) Another agency, state governments, gives in to special interest lobbying and forces ALL insurance policies sold by insurance companies in that state to include benefits such as alcohol rehabilitation programs, mental health programs, maternity benefits, etc, and demands that ALL such policies are sold at the same price -- which means that those that want these benefits get them primarily at the expense of those who don’t want them.
And if you think you can just buy a cheaper policy from another state -- a policy that is cheaper because it doesn’t contain certain benefits you know you’ll never use -- well, tough luck, because the states with these mandates generally have laws prohibiting you from purchasing from other states.
5) Another agency, the FDA, adds millions to the costs of new drugs by spending years approving drugs after drug companies have already spent years on double-blind studies proving the drugs work.
6) That same agency -- which has zero experience in manufacturing and generally employs people that know nothing about manufacturing -- nevertheless promulgates a vast set of regulations known as "Good Manufacturing Practices" that forces those manufacturing medical devices to create thousands of pages of written procedures, audits, etc., thereby driving up the costs of all manner of medical devices.
This massive set of regulations, in addition to driving up the costs of existing manufacturers, also constitutes a huge “barrier to entry” to any new firms that might wish to compete with existing firms, thereby reducing the competition in the field of medical device production.
7) Still yet another agency -- the tort court system and the trial lawyers -- forces doctors to carry malpractice insurance policies whose premiums may exceed $100, 000 a year -- as well as forcing doctors to run numerous medical tests not because they think the patient needs it or has asked for it, but simply to practice what is known as “defensive medicine”.
If you think the economic effect of this tort system is small, ask yourself why the trial lawyer’s professional groups give millions in campaign contributions every election to Democrats sympathetic to the current tort rules.
8) Still yet another agency, the Federal Reserve, continuously inflates a fiat currency thereby guaranteeing an ongoing, constant decrease in the value of everyone’s dollars.
How, in the face of this onslaught, can you expect anything BUT rapidly rising costs?
And why on earth -- in the face of all the evidence that these government interventions are economically disastrous and unsustainable -- would anyone think we can put 40 million more people into the system at no additional cost?
How is more of the same poison going to make us well instead of killing us off?
You are offering salt and protein to Spencer when he clearly wants sugar and meringue.
Obama good,
Free markets bad.
Again you show up not to do much more than throw darts, useless idiot shit.
Tell me sir, is the healthcare inefficient, or is it the government dictated payment and paperwork?
I have had three operations here in Houston in the last 20 years, all three were conducted in different hospitals by different surgeons, and all three were examples of efficiency and good results.
I am willing to bet my next months earnings that the dominant inefficiency or waste in our health care system is that which is introduced by government dictate.
But, then I am generally more willing to trust the guy I pay than the guy you vote for.
I think the question that needs to be answered is why we pay 50% more than countries like France? That's where the debate should be focused.
What makes you think that this is true?
http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2008/offenses/expand...
There were 14,180 murders in the United States in 2008. The U.S. population in 2008 is estimated to have been 303,824,640 in 2008
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-wo...
giving the U.S. a murder rate of 4.1 in 2008. If France's murder rate was 1.64 in 2004 [I believe it was higher than that in 2008, closer to 2.0], then the U.S. murder rate in 2008 is 2.5 times that of France in 2004. If I am correct about France's 2008 murder rate, the U.S. rate is roughly twice that of France.
The problems that need to be recognized in comparing homicide rates from one country to another are numerous. For example, out of the 14,180 Americans in 2008 who became murder victims, 6,782 (47%) were African Americans. Source: FBI Website, above..
This is off the topic of life expectancy but it does show that comparing any statistic between the U.S. and other countries has problems of its own. Other countries have their own way of recording [or not recording] data and it is not always easy for us to track how they do it.
I know something from my own personal experience that admittedly is not scientific. I know that the Paris subway is sometimes a very dangerous place.
The Center for Disease Control, provide these numbers for U.S. homicides in the year 2006, the most recent year avalable at their website:
Number of deaths: 18,573
Deaths per 100,000 population: 6.2
Can you provide a link, Mr. Willis, showing homicide rates in France that will support your data?
"Murder is a form of criminal homicide; other forms of homicide might not constitute criminal acts. These homicides are regarded as justified or excusable. ... The intent of the killer usually determines whether a criminal homicide is classified as murder or Manslaughter and at what degree.
...Modern statutes generally divide criminal homicide into two broad categories: murder and manslaughter. Murder is usually further divided into the first degree, which typically involves a premeditated intent to kill, and the second degree, which typically does not involve a premeditated intent to kill. Manslaughter typically involves an unintentional killing that resulted from a person's criminal negligence or reckless disregard for human life."
What the U.S. pays for its health care compared to other nations is pretty much right in line with the relationship that exists between health expenditures per capita and GDP per capita. France (for example) pays much less because that level of spending is consistent with their much lower level of GDP per capita.
Other nations, meanwhile, actively suppress the amount of their health care spending by limiting its availability (Canada, UK, etc.), which should not ever be mistaken for efficiency. Continually high capacity utilization rates for medical facilities in these countries are a confirmation of chronic underinvestment in critical resources.
The five-year survival data for cancers is a flawed measure. We screen for cancers more than almost any other nation. (Japan, for some cancers, screens very intensely.) When you screen more, you find more cancers at an early stage. If a typical cancer kills in seven years, and we pick it up at year one, then almost everyone is alive five years later. If French physicians pick it up at year three, nearly everyone is dead five years later. Early detection only makes a difference when early treatment improves survival. That's true of some cancers, but not all cancers. In cases where it isn't true, our diligent screening added extra costs, extra years of knowing you have cancer, and no improvement in outcome.
September 25, 2009
Categories: Senate
Ensign receives handwritten confirmation
This doesn't happen often enough.
Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) received a handwritten note Thursday from Joint Committee on Taxation Chief of Staff Tom Barthold confirming the penalty for failing to pay the up to $1,900 fee for not buying health insurance.
Violators could be charged with a misdemeanor and could face up to a year in jail or a $25,000 penalty, Barthold wrote on JCT letterhead. He signed it "Sincerely, Thomas A. Barthold."
The note was a follow-up to Ensign's questioning at the markup.
OBAMA-Care, anyone?
And now that liberals and their leftist allies have control of both houses of Congress and the Executive Branch, what is their proposed solution to this terrible injustice? Their solution is to put a gun to the head of all the uninsured and FORCE them to purchase insurance, under threat of fine or jail time if they do not!
And the liberals are just fine with this "solution"! Oh, sure, they demand a "public option" to reduce the cost of buying this insurance-at-gunpoint, but that's just window dressing, just a sugarcoating to entice Americans to swallow this poison pill.
This approach is the essence of fascism: the pretense of private property is maintained -- your money is not seized outright by the government -- but the government has totalitarian power to force you to spend it as the government wants.
Obama is a power-lusting fascist with no absolutely no respect for our rights or our liberties. I wonder how many of those that voted for him knew what they were getting.
I haven't seen the data, but I would think Canadians would be similar in that regard to Americans. But Canadian health care is so much inferior to much of Europe, not to mention the US, that it is unlikely to be an important confounding factor.
The statistical arguments against the quality of health care in the US almost without exception deliberately avoid using ACTUAL measures of health care quality, even when such data are available. They don't even attempt to control for obvious strong confounders like genetic predispositions. There is nothing wrong with the OECD computing life expectancies for various countries. However, it is extraordinarily unprofessional and ideological for them to then claim that it is even an attempted measure of health care quality.
If you want to determine the relative quality of US health care, then I recommend you look through the medical literature for treatment outcomes. Such data are not easy to find in a form to compare across national boundaries, and there is no single measure of quality, but you quickly accumulate an impression that from premature birth survival rates, to treated cancer survival, to speed of diagnosis and treatment of morbid conditions, to heart disease, that the quality of health care in the US is incomparable.
Health care is a relatively small (but much valued) contributor to health, so measures of health as proxies to health care, are sophistic devices.