[ExI] My prediction

[spike at rainier66.com]

From: John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> 
…

On Fri, Jan 9, 2026 at 5:36 PM <spike at rainier66.com <mailto:spike at rainier66.com> > wrote

 

>>…Per capita the US spends $14,885 per capita on healthcare each year and has a life expectancy of 79.6 years, Albania spends $414 per capita on healthcare each year and has a life expectancy of 80 years. …. John K Clark

 

> OK.  Let’s send our medical students to Albania, and do it their way.

 

>…Let me see if I've got this straight, after you studied those 3 lists you concluded that the way the USA handles healthcare is better than the way any other country in the world does, even though it spends FAR FAR more on it than any other country on planet earth and yet 47 countries have longer life expectancy than the USA….

 

John, there is a lot more to life expectancy than the quality of healthcare.  An example: pharmaceutical companies invest enormous sums to get a new medication thru the approval process to gain access to the highly profitable US market.  They can’t charge as much outside the USA because companies will just figure out what is in the medication and make their own knockoff.  Here we have strong intellectual property rights which prevents that.  Consequence: our drugs cost a lot more here, a looooot more.  

 

That is just one example however.  Albania has a longer life expectancy, but there is more to life expectancy than the quality of medical care.  I will let you run with the ball on that if you wish.

 

>… eliminate the one remaining subsidy that slightly helped Americans pay their astronomically huge medical bills….

 

It was called the Affordable Care Act.  It failed John.  Health care didn’t become more affordable, it became waaaay less affordable.  The “plan” that replaces it will also fail if it makes you feel any better.

 

 > I rather suspect they don’t do much for sick people in Albania.

 

>…It's not just Albania you need to dismiss with a wave of your hand, there are 46 other countries that get FAR more out of their healthcare dollars than we do…. John K Clark

 

 

Again, you assume a correlation between quality of healthcare and life expectancy.  Health care is part of it.  

 

spike

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