[creato]

> In contrast, the care that people get from Medicare is substantially worse than what you get from private insurance in the US.

I don’t think they are comparable. Medicare exists because private insurers refuse to cover old people at a reasonable price. It’s a good scam the private insurers have going: take peoples money when they are generally healthy and productive, drop them like a sack of shit onto the government’s lap when they aren’t.

[pclmulqdq]

The price of elder care in the US is not due to insurance companies, but due to the amount of attention someone demands before them die in a US hospital. Many socialized healthcare systems do not allow doctors to waste nearly as many resources this way.

That is why the life expectancy of the average obese, unhealthy American is about the same as the life expectancy of the average (much healthier) Japanese or European person. Americans are allowed to eat their way to an early grave and then have medical resources thrown at them to desperately keep them alive a few days longer.

EDIT: Also, I should point out that doctors generally demand a lot less end-of-life care than members of the general US population. They seem to understand that it is merely prolonging the inevitable rather than helping.