[extropy-chat] Re: Ethics and evolution

[Alfio Puglisi]

On Mon, 5 Sep 2005, Mike Lorrey wrote:

>
>
> --- Alfio Puglisi <puglisi at arcetri.astro.it> wrote:
>>
>> There aren't too many data points on what happens with state
>> intervention in health care. But there are some. The OECD Health Data
>
>> (http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/10/20/2789777.pdf, first table) shows
>> that the United States has the highest percentage of GDP (about 13%)
>> spent on health care of all the Western world. Traditional socialized
>> health-care nations like Germany and Switzerland only spend 10%, and
>> I believe that the health care is of comparable quality. All OECD
>> nations show a slow rising of the GDP % spent on health care.
>
> Reasons for this are as follows:
> 1) The US is experiencing its health care baby boom crisis first.

If I understand correctly what a "baby boom crisis" is, this is not true. 
European nations have on average older populations, so that health care 
and pension costs are higher. For example a full 19% of Italy's pupulation 
is over 65 years old, compared to only 12.5% of the US.


> 2) Socialized nations are exporting their most expensive patients to
> the US. They do this by rationing expensive procedures with waiting
> lists that are longer than the life expectancy of the patients on the
> lists. This drives patients to travel to the US to buy the procedures
> with their own money, while at the same time driving up demand for the
> procedures here, and thus driving up price with demand as the free
> market laws dictate.
> 3) Free health care given to millions of illegals who do not pay for
> their services, skip on the bills, etc and don't even pay taxes because
> they are paid under the table. Literally billions of dollars nationwide
> are spent on this, which would not be tolerated in Germany or
> Switzerland.

Fair points, but they should be quantified to see how relevant they are. 
Point 3) is partially true for european nations too, albeit much smaller.

> 4) To be fair the US is not doing enough to protect US workers from
> corporations defrauding their retirees of their health plans they
> already paid for, especially by abusing bankruptcy law to do so.
>>
>> Alfio
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>
>
> Mike Lorrey
> Vice-Chair, 2nd District, Libertarian Party of NH
> Founder, Constitution Park Foundation:
> http://constitutionpark.blogspot.com
> Personal/political blog: http://intlib.blogspot.com
>
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