[dragonwriter]

> Saying America spends more is pretty weak claim because Americans are fatter, more often shot, face worse natural disasters (hurricanes, earth quakes)... Of course they spend more.

“Fatter“ and “more often shot” are at least in part due to choices about the focus and distribution of physical and mental health care, not independent factors (in fact, the political faction most defensive of the ways in which the US system differs from the less-expensive, comparable overall outcomes systems in the rest of the developed world also is prone to claiming that the elevated risk of being shot is primarily a product of defects in the health care delivery system, though they tend to lose focus on doing something about those deficiencies quickly after pointing to them.) If you've got evidence that the health impacts of natural disasters are greater—in a way explained by the nature of the disasters alone and not choices in the structure of the health care system—in the US than any, much less all, of the other advanced economies in the OECD, please point it out, because that would be interesting.

[maerF0x0]

I actually do agree that part of the gun violence equation is mental health care. That doesn't mean socialized mental health care is the best solution to healthcare needs. Simply that having a society which does not value mental healthcare at all is suboptimal.