Friday, November 10, 2006

American Health Care Kills

American health care tends to divide the population into insiders and outsiders. Insiders, who have good insurance, receive everything modern medicine can provide, no matter how expensive. Outsiders, who have poor insurance or none at all, receive very little. To take just one example, one study found that among Americans diagnosed with colorectal cancer, those without insurance were 70 percent more likely than those with insurance to die over the next three years.

In response to new medical technology, the system spends even more on insiders. But it compensates for higher spending on insiders, in part, by consigning more people to outsider status—robbing Peter of basic care in order to pay for Paul's state-of-the-art treatment. Thus we have the cruel paradox that medical progress is bad for many Americans' health.

The Health Care Crisis and What to Do About It

1 Comments:

Blogger Thurston Thatcher Hedgewick said...

National Healthcare is a death sentence for old people.

The United States spends 15.3 percent of it's GDP on health care. Canada and the U.K., countries with national healthcare
systems, spend respectively 10 and 8.4 percent of their GDP on health.

"End of life" medical expenses in the last few weeks of life constitute the bulk of health expenses that most people incur over their lifetimes.

To big government statists, futile spending on the medical needs of people who are going to die anyway is wasteful.

If withholding expensive medical treatments hastens the demise of people whom Lenin classified as "useless eaters" so much the better for the economy and the governments finances.

The sooner old people die off, the sooner the government can stop paying social security benefits, the sooner the government can collect estate taxes, the larger the estates that remains to be taxed, the larger the amount of estate taxes, the sooner the heirs will be forced to sell the estate and pay property taxes, etc.

Exterminating old people is profitable for the government, and any scheme that makes it easier for the government to get the oldster's money is hazardous to their health and to their lives.

6:09 PM, April 17, 2009  

Post a Comment

<< Home