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Originally Posted by willravel
I demonstrated through verifiable sources that we pay more per capita on health care than any other industrialized country. I believe it was the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development that held the study on health care expenses of the industrialized nations including the US. The amount of GDP that is spent on healthcare in the US is staggering, dwarfing even France who has the best health care in the world according to the massive WHO study released a few years back (and nothing has changed since then).
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We do spend more. Ever asked why? As I said up above, it's cultural.
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Consider this quote from <A HREF="http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2007/10/maggie_mahar_vs.html#more">Maggie Mahar, quoted by Arnold Kling</A>, with Kling's comments:<BLOCKQUOTE>Mahar starts out her post with an interesting poll
Dr. Steven Schroeder, former head of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Distinguished Professor of Health and Health Care at the University of California, San Francisco, told a provocative story about a poll that asked patients in the U.S. `Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the U.K the following question:
“If your personal doctor told you that you had an incurable and fatal disease, would you accept that diagnosis or seek a second opinion?"
* In the U.S., 91 percent of patients said they would seek a second opinion.
* In Canada, 80 percent
* In Australia , 71 percent
* In New Zealand, 51 percent
* In the U.K., 28 percent
My line is that America's health care system reflects American values. One of our key values is, "Don't give up!" Suppose you have, say, a problem with your shoulder, and your doctor says that you should just live with it and take a pain reliever every now and then. If you tell twenty of your friends and colleagues about this recommendation, you will come away with the names of 25 doctors you should see. Even if individual doctors want to avoid unnecessary procedures, society is working against them.</BLOCKQUOTE>
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Any program to be enacted in America has to fit Americans. I'm sure health care would be quite cheap in, say, Guinea-Bissau, but programs appropriate for that culture wouldn't be appropriate for the US. And that's one of the several clear places where your argument breaks down. You're assuming it's purely attributable to there being some (restricted) scope for the operation of market in the US. Not so. It's at least equally attributable to the
distortions of the market by poorly conceived regulation and through the separation of use from payment through insurance and benefits. Throw in the cultural aspects of how Americans use the health care system, and you'll see that your argument breaks down fairly drastically. That's why I think we have to eliminate third-party payment as the most equitable solution.