[ExI] Transhumanism and Politics

[J. Andrew Rogers]

On Jan 26, 2008, at 11:43 AM, Lee Corbin wrote:
> I think that it's too bad that we don't have a free market in health
> care, so that it could cater to poor people too. Sure, they would
> not receive the same level of care as those of us in the middle do,
> but hell, no one I know can get the care that the very rich or
> important commonly obtain---and that's something that will never
> change, no matter what.


It is an inconvenient truth that healthcare outcomes as a function of  
income follow the same general distribution across the healthcare  
models of the industrialized world.  The solution is not to attempt to  
equalize outcomes, which would almost certainly be futile or reduce  
mean outcomes, but to maximize the average outcome given the resources  
at hand.

The US has the best average outcomes in the world by substantial  
margin; an interesting question is whether or not the European systems  
would produce similar outcomes if they had as much money to spend per  
capita.

J. Andrew Rogers