I need to find it again but I recently saw an interesting set of comparative charts. It showed 3 statistics for a bunch of countries. 1) The percentage of the country's total medical spending that is spent by the government 2) The percentage of the country's GDP that total medical spending represented and 3) WHO's ranking of the country's medical care.
In regards to wendy's point, around 50% of total medical spending in this country is
already done by the government. So the change being proposed is hardly the 180 degree philosophical shift for this country towards socialism poeple would like us to believe.
So most of the other countries shown had socialized systems where the government represents >80% of spending. The first thing I noticed was, among this list, the US was the ONLY country where total medical spending was >10% of GDP, which seems to rather put lie to the myth that socialized health care = runaway spending. Most were in the 7-8% range, the US is 15%.
Then there were the rankings. The US was something like #23. All but 2 of the countries on the list were ranked higher by WHO, which challenges the common argument that such systems mean worse care.
Just saying.
ETA: Aha, found it. And the US ranking was worse than I remembered, #37
http://thetoiletpaper.com/blog/2009/...ped-countries/
08-12-2009, 07:47 AM
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