ACA Repeal/Replace: Progressives Face Moral Dilemma

[pbrower2a]

(04-10-2017, 02:15 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote:

(04-09-2017, 09:47 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: We have the most expensive medical-care system in the world. The chart does not give enough data for financial analysis of the causes, but private payments alone are about half of what America pays on average per person -- and that is more than the total payments for medical care per person in some countries. Public and private expenditure is similarly high; indeed they are about equal.  Amounts per capita for both public expenditure and private expenditure on medical care  are both higher than what is paid in other countries in total. I am not sure that we get better results except for those in the business of medical care. .



If this were transportation, it would be as if the only cars that we could buy were over-priced marques and all the roads (even dirt roads) had heavy tolls for use. We would find that anything that required transportation would be fiendishly expensive in contrast to comparable costs in other countries. Employers would be setting up (slum) employee housing and company stores  next to places of mass employment just to keep labor costs down. Those in the highway business would be telling people the glories of using their overpriced cars or driving on their overpriced tollways. There would be huge public-sector spending on subsidies for the transportation industry, and those subsidies would feed the bottom lines of transportation companies. Meanwhile, all else gets impoverished.

I know of Americans going to Mexico for medical care. Mexico may be no paradise for physicians, but Mexican physicians and pharmacists welcome American patients. Mexico does not have profits-first policy to allow Big Pharma to gouge customers. Mexico is a poor country,  but the difference between American medical costs and Mexican medical costs might be a good reason to retire in Mexico. That's about $7000 a year.

Do Americans have higher medical costs due to bad habits? At least we do not smoke much by world standards. We are not bigger drinkers than the world average. We are not more sedentary. We simply have an extreme example of profits-first medicine that no other nation would tolerate.

However compared with the Rest of the World Americans eat more carbs, meat, fatty foods and processed foods. Also, the addiction to sodas.

...just notice all the grotesquely-obese people. I have been in a bind and had to use food aid, and I was surprised at what I could buy with the aid. But I generally chose to eat little junk. It is not my desire to go to a monotonous diet. I am not a scratch cook (that would require more of an expenditure of time in cooking and cleaning), so my lasagna comes out of a box. But this said, I could and did choose strawberries over potato chips.

It may be cynical, but I see those bear-sized humans shop for food as a warning of what not to buy in the grocery store. Chips, chips, and more chips. Cand. Snack cakes. I did not need to make comments to the schmucks damning themselves to fatal heart attacks in their forties.

Yes, many smoke. I question whether these people truly can enjoy life.