[ExI] Health care discussion

[Damien Sullivan]

On Tue, May 12, 2009 at 04:52:36PM +0200, painlord2k at libero.it wrote:

> The Canadians have not the same ethnic/social composition of the US, so  
> they could live longer for genetic reasons.

Problem is, US whites, being most of the US population, don't live much
longer than the US average.  E.g.
http://www.childtrendsdatabank.org/indicators/78LifeExpectancy.cfm
77.8 US vs. 78.3 white US.

> The Canadians are prohibited to pay for additional healthcare or they  
> forfeited the public healthcare, so it is understandable they spend less  

A feature unique to Canada, as is being next door to the US.  Spending
less than the US for longer life than American whites is not unique to
Canada.  

> Then, healthcare is only partially responsible of life length of people.
> Better food, sanitation, lower crime, etc. can have an effect.

True, but that turns "the US health care system is broken" into "the
American way of life is unhealthy and broken".  An interesting maneuver,
to say the least.  The "richest country in the world" can't provide
healthy food or *sanitation*?

> 50% of healthcare costs happen during the last one-two years of life.

Which, BTW, means that a lot of US health care ends up being paid for by
the government, via Medicare.  "Hip replacements are faster in the US
than Canada!"  "So US Medicare is better than Canada's Medicare?"

-xx- Damien X-)