[anamax]

> It's been successful in every country that has tried it.

Doesn't that depend on the starting point? For example, NHS started during the post WWII depression in the UK. The US isn't starting from there.

I'm trying to track down the stats, but I've heard that the US lifespan is world-longest if you adjust for accidents and homicide, two things that aren't affected by healthcare.

> Granted, the US has a bad habit of poorly implemented government programs so who knows, we may be the first exception.

The US govt gets the same amount of tax revenue per person as the "rich" EU countries. If the benefits are less ....

[kragen]

> I've heard that the US lifespan is world-longest if you adjust for accidents and homicide, two things that aren't affected by healthcare.

Other measures of health care quality, such as infant mortality, are worse in the US than in many other countries. So I doubt it.

[miked]

Other measures of health care quality, such as infant mortality, are worse in the US...

Nope. The US spends far more on trying to save the lives of premature and sickly newborns than any other country. Many these don;t make it after being born and show up in the stats as "high infant mortality". This approach also drives up health care costs.

One can argue (having met two crack babies that survived, I personally would be tempted to in many cases) that US hospitals shouldn't do this, but nevertheless they do do it. And it costs money and skews statistics.

I also have personally experienced health care in other countries (Greece, Mexico, China -- where my wife was a doctor). No thanks.

[kragen]

The US spends far more on trying to save the lives of premature and sickly newborns than any other country.

[citation needed]

Many these don;t make it after being born and show up in the stats as "high infant mortality".

That's true in every country, regardless of how hard you try to save their lives. More of them make it after being born if you try very hard to save their lives.

I also have personally experienced health care in other countries (Greece, Mexico, China

So have I. I surely don't need to point out to you, with your wide travel experience, that not all other countries are equal. The Argentine health care I've experienced is head and shoulders above anything I've experienced in the US, although that's mostly because I live in the capital where things are good.

The US's infant mortality rate is about .0063. Greece's is about .005 to .007. Mexico's is .017 or .018. China's is about .020 to .023. Your personal experience that care is much worse in those countries, with the exception of Greece, supports the validity of infant mortality as a measure of care quality; it does not undermine it.

There are around 25 countries with better infant mortality than the US, but that doesn't include the three you listed. Several of them have less than half the infant mortality level of the US. Have you personally experienced health care in any of them? What was your experience?

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/List_of_count...

I recognize that statistics do not always capture the reality of a situation. However, in this case, I don't think it's adequate to simply deny their validity without any evidence. (The evidence you have adduced so far, from your personal experience, supports their validity rather than undermining it.)

[anamax]

> There are around 25 countries with better infant mortality than the US,

With comparable populations?

For example, Scandanavians do well everywhere. (However, the US ones do better than the ones who didn't leave.) A population dominated by Scandanavians will do better than one that is more "typical".

I'm pretty sure that the US healthcare system is not responsible for crank and crack mothers, but it gets "credit" for their birth problems.

[nooneelse]

> "...if you adjust for accidents and homicide, two things that aren't affected by healthcare."

Healthcare is quite involved in dealing with the effects of accidents on humans. So I would think that death rate from accidents, broadly speaking, is not independent from level of healthcare. Or is that a technical term that already distinguishes between those that survive the accident long enough to possibly receive treatment and those that don't?

[anamax]

> So I would think that death rate from accidents, broadly speaking, is not independent from level of healthcare.

There are two numbers - the accident rate, which is independent of healthcare, and the "how good was treatment for accident victims" number, which does depend on healthcare. Their product is the death rate from accidents.

Here are two populations that demonstrate these effects.

In population 1, everyone has an accident each year and 90% survive. That's 10% deaths due to accidents.

In population 2, 10% of the population has an accident, and only 50% of accident victims survive. That's 5% deaths due to accidents.

If the accidents are the same, it's silly to argue that population 2 has better "accident healthcare" even though its death rate due to accidents is half of population 1's.

If the accidents are different, it's impossible to say which population has better accident healthcare without more information.

Here's another way to look at it. The death rate for automobile accidents in 2000 in the US was significantly higher than the death rate for automobile accidents in 1850. Does that imply that 1850 accident healthcare was better?

[Retric]

Much of that gap is, DoD spending and interest on debt. However, per person Canada spends about the same money on universal heath care as we do to cover 50% of heath care spending. Much of that relates to malpractice insurance, the overhead from private insurance/medical billing, and higher doctor salaries. But, we also pay a lot more for the same medications/medical devices etc.

So, looking at our "overhead" it's easy to see why we get little benefit from the money spent.