The Best Healthcare System in the World?

[Wrong Direction]

This discussion has been a good one. Here are a few points that I haven't seen made yet...

1. In addition to things like murder and car accidents, the obesity levels in this country are out of control. I'm not sure how that would affect the WHO rankings, but it certainly adds a lot of costs compared to other nations, and it can't help infant mortality either.

2. Many of the sickest in this country are already eligible for government care, but they don't enroll. In fact, the enrollment levels for programs like Medicaid, food stamps, etc., are notoriously bad. Congress says they'll cover everyone, but the individual him/her self doesn't enroll. Just thought I'd make the point. This is by design, of course. It's expensive to create opt-out programs, so you can claim to cover more people with opt-in programs and know that about 1/2 won't opt-in and will never receive the care that was promised.

3. This debate over America having the best health care system is stupid. Do we have the best healthcare in the aggregate, probably so. Is our system the best or most inclusive, most certainly not. Our healthcare system is nothing more than a loose conglomeration of entities lobbying for more government money.

4. To describe the American healthcare system as a private healthcare system is totally false. The federal portion of Medicare and Medicaid costs alone is about what the budget is for the department of defense. Add in the VA healthcare system, the state pickup on Medicaid, FEHB, local state/county health plans, hospital and nursing home regulations and to some extent union run plans (particularly teachers) and you have a healthcare system that has government infusion at every point of contact.

The basic notion that this system is a result of capitalism is incredibly simplistic and flat out wrong. In fact, I see nearly every day an example of government protecting the current delivery systems at the expense of inefficiencies that capitalists would remove (think independent pharmacies, individual physician practices).

Some private industries do participate and have figured out how to make a profit, but make no mistake about this being a free marketplace. All of those private people operate under the rules of lawmakers everywhere.

[deejaydana]

Someone mentioned not knowing how it is in other countries and that's a good point. We do have 'some' elements in healtcare that really are the best the world over (drug & medical machinery/device innovation, incredible R&D, investment monies, premiere care, etc) but that doesn't mean we don't also have some serious flaws as well (runaway costs, hidden costs, denials of service/coverage). Having lived in the UK for some time they do cover 'everyone' but that, like everything, comes at a cost and at the cost of efficiency. There is likely no way around this bugger in that sense. I don't know why any person thinks there exists any kind of perfect system. Hopefully something good can come out of this whole debate but I still shudder at pushing any program through of this size & magnitude in such short order.

[Larry]

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/36/Income_Taxes_By_Country.svg/800px-Income_Taxes_By_Country.svg.png

It's a myth that Health Care is going to be more affordable.

What does this have to do with healthcare?

You figure it out, I provided a nice little chart.

Translation: It's completely meaningless, but if I'm insulting enough maybe nobody will notice.

And, as near as I can tell, your nice little chart is completely bogus.

Merely looking at their data for the US, they claim that the median tax rate in the US is 28%.

According to The Tax Foundation (in 2007) the average taxpayer paid a tax of 12.8% of his adjusted Gross Income (which isn't even his entire income, but is the income after some deductions). Even the downtrodden and discriminated against top 1% of taxpayers paid a tax rate of 22.8%, still well below what your chart claims is the average.

And even that completely bogus number completely pales compared to their claim that the average corporation pays a thirty-nine percent tax rate on their income.

I can't seem to find a source that's as reputable as the Tax Foundation that reports on actual corporate income taxes paid. The only places I can fins that actually discuss the actual taxes paid, as opposed to the taxes that the law says should be paid, are much more emotional places.

However, I do, for example, find one place that was looking at the Fortune 500 companies for the period of 01-03. They ruled out any of the Fortune 500 who had a year where they didn't declare a profit to the stockholders, and those for which they couldn't tell how much corporate income tax they paid, and came up with 275 companies that they looked at.

That's from this place, which looks to me like they may have an agenda. But their data includes such information as:

Over the three-year period, the average effective rate for all 275 companies dropped by a fifth, from 21.4 percent in 2001 to 17.2 percent in 2002-2003.

The statistics are startling:

* Eighty-two of the 275 companies, almost a third of the total, paid zero or less in federal income taxes in at least one year from 2001 to 2003. In the years they paid no income tax, these companies earned $102 billion in pretax U.S. profits. But instead of paying $35.6 billion in income taxes as the statutory 35 percent corporate tax rate seems to require, these companies generated so many excess tax breaks that they received outright tax rebate checks from the U.S. Treasury, totaling $12.6 billion. These companies' "negative tax rates" meant that they made more after taxes than before taxes in those no-tax years.

and

Corporate taxes paid for more than a quarter of federal outlays in the 1950s and a fifth in the 1960s. They began to decline during the Nixon administration, yet even by the second half of the 1990s, corporate taxes still covered 11 percent of the cost of federal programs. But in fiscal years 2002 and 2003, corporate taxes paid for a mere 6 percent of federal expenses.

And if that site appears too biased for you (they look like they have an agenda to me, but that doesn't mean their numbers aren't true), then the always liberal Wall Street Journal has this article, which mentions

IF YOU SAY SOMETHING long enough and loud enough, there's every chance people will come to believe it's true, especially if your opponents tire of rebuttals.

This time-honored political strategy has been working overtime of late, as Republican presidential hopefuls romance the richer Florida retirees with appeals for cuts in corporate taxes.

You may have heard: U.S. corporations face one of the highest income tax rates in the world, though the mention of "rate" is often enough excised, so that what comes through is the assertion that corporations pay too much in taxes. This is simply untrue if your basis for comparison is the developed world. The truth is that while the 35% corporate income tax rate is high indeed, the creativity and global reach of U.S. corporations make them among the most lightly levied.

Between 2000 and 2005, U.S. corporate taxes amounted to 2.2% of the GDP. The average for the 30 mostly rich member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development was 3.4%.

Why the disparity given the high federal rate, which rises to 39% counting state taxes? Part of the answer is that big U.S. companies have become expert at hiding profits in tax havens overseas. And many of the smaller ones simply pass through their income to owners who then report it on their personal returns.

According to one analysis, if so much corporate income hadn't moved to the personal tax rolls over the last 20 years, U.S. corporate taxes would account for 3.2% of the GDP, still a bit below the OECD average. "Usage of pass-through forms of business organization can be viewed as a form of 'self-help' corporate tax integration," writes Peter R. Merrill, a partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers.

The income not squired away overseas or channeled to the personal returns still enjoys protection in the form of various tax breaks that depress the effective rate to 27%, according to the Treasury Department. Such breaks are expected to cost the Treasury $1.2 trillion over the next 10 years, reducing the corporate tax revenue by 25%.

[Larry]

We are talking about paying 20 to 25% sales tax on certain items in some of the countries mentioned in the OP. I know for a fact Canada has a sin tax on items such as beer and wine and that is directly linked to the cost of health care.

1) Oh, no. You mean, they tax people who drink a lot to cover medical costs?

2) Good thing the US doesn't have sin taxes on booze and cigarettes.

[Larry]

You walk in critical your seen instantly in 99% of the cases.

IF you have a quadruple bypass coming you get it... and go back home alive.

The one and only time that I've ever been to the ER, I had severe pains in the center of my chest. I don't know if I was having a heart attack or not, but I'd never had pains like that before (or since).

An hour and a half later, a technician hooked up an EKG machine to me, pushed the "start" button, waited 30 seconds, and disconnected me.

Three hours after that, I walked out, still without the Doctor showing up to read the piece of paper which the technician had produced.

[Hunter44]

1) Oh, no. You mean, they tax people who drink a lot to cover medical costs?

2) Good thing the US doesn't have sin taxes on booze and cigarettes.

I'm waiting for the twinkie tax!! Now we're talking...

[GoSkins561]

I'm waiting for the twinkie tax!! Now we're talking...

Exactly, alcohol isn't killing people, saturated fat is.

[Duncan]

but that doesn't explain away our rankings in life expectancy and other metrics. The U.S. has fallen from its perch and the healthcare system today is not the best overall, especially for certain demographic groups and certain areas of the country.

If you take away homicides and auto accidents we rank 1st in life expectancy.

[chipwhich]

Keep eating the majority of your diet at McDonalds BK and Chick Fil a and our health care system will continue to plummet. Obamacare or not.

Wake up people

[Hunter44]

If you take away homicides and auto accidents we rank 1st in life expectancy.

Where are you getting this info??

Life expectancy rank: 50 Puerto Rico comes in 42

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...ife_expectancy

Preventable Death: WASHINGTON, Jan 8 (Reuters) - France, Japan and Australia rated best and the United States worst in new rankings focusing on preventable deaths due to treatable conditions in 19 leading industrialized nations, researchers said on Tuesday.

http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSN07651650

Newborn mortality rate by country: 33

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...mortality_rate

[GoSkins561]

Keep eating the majority of your diet at McDonalds BK and Chick Fil a and our health care system will continue to plummet. Obamacare or not.

Wake up people

Yep, exxxxactly.

[Destino]

Keep eating the majority of your diet at McDonalds BK and Chick Fil a and our health care system will continue to plummet. Obamacare or not.

Wake up people

Keep feeding kids in public school chocolate milk, fries, and pizza for lunch in school and then scratch your head as to why adult eating habits are poor.

[techboy]

These countries absolutely use tax to pay for their health care, the difference is, they tax some items so heavily that the common man can't afford some of the more average things in life.

What kinds of things can the common man not afford in Europe?

[deejaydana]

What kinds of things can the common man not afford in Europe?

The GM Canyonero SUV for one....nowhere to park it.

[Larry]

I'm waiting for the twinkie tax!! Now we're talking...

Exactly, alcohol isn't killing people, saturated fat is.

Keep the Government out of my McDonald's Dollar Menu!

[Larry]

If you take away homicides and auto accidents we rank 1st in life expectancy.

You got a source for that?

I'd wondered about that possibility back on page 1, but I couldn't find a source for it.

[Hunter44]

You got a source for that?

I'd wondered about that possibility back on page 1, but I couldn't find a source for it.

I just found this but it doesn't come close to supporting his claim.

http://www.unitedjustice.com/death-statistics.html

http://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Main/index.aspx

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate

[Hunter44]

Keep the Government out of my McDonald's Dollar Menu!

That's fine as long as I don't have to pay for your heart attack and diebetes treatments.....Fair??

[LaxBuddy21]

That's fine as long as I don't have to pay for your heart attack and diebetes treatments.....Fair??

So as long as I keep my private health insurance plan, the government can mind their own business right? They can stop putting sin taxes on things I enjoy in an attempt to try to control my choices!

[WVUforREDSKINS]

"Cuz itz alll about money, money, money!"

[Hunter44]

So as long as I keep my private health insurance plan, the government can mind their own business right? They can stop putting sin taxes on things I enjoy in an attempt to try to control my choices!

As long as your enjoyment doesn't cost me anything have fun!!:hysterical:

[PeterMP]

You got a source for that?

I'd wondered about that possibility back on page 1, but I couldn't find a source for it.

http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2009/08/25/violence-traffic-accidents-and-us-life-expectancy/

"The argument appears to be based on a 2006 report written by the economists Robert L. Ohsfeldt and John E. Schneider and published by the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. The report, which analyzes the OECD’s life-expectancy data from 1980-1999, uses a statistical model called a regression in an attempt to adjust for the effects of traffic accidents, suicides, homicides and falls from the OECD’s rankings. The report finds that “adjusted” U.S. life-expectancy rises to first, from an unadjusted ranking of 19th of 29 countries.

But the OECD itself took the trouble to counter this finding in print. In a footnote to its 2008 economic survey of the U.S., the agency says that Ohsfeldt and Schneider’s estimates are based in part on GDP. If you don’t factor in GDP, the U.S. ranks 17th in the world for life expectancy when the high U.S. rate of fatal injuries is ignored, the OECD said."

http://www.aei.org/docLib/9780844742403.pdf

They include a factor based on GDP. They expect, based on other countries as per capitia GDP increases, that the number of lethan injuries should decrease. When you take into account the GDP of the US, you significantly decrease the number of these types of injuries we should be having.

Simply removing them doesn't have the effect of moving us to number 1. Recalculating how many we should have and than decreasing how many we do have to that new number, while leaving other countries at the value they have takes us to number 1.

So essentially if you assume that we are in "first" (have the least) for the number of deaths due to non-natural factors (e.g. homicides, suicides, and accidents) instead of being "last" (having the most) and leave other countries where they are (as expected based on their GDP), then we have the longest life expectancy.

They didn't "remove" injury related deaths, but "corrected" for them based on GDP.

Not having read the whole OCED report quoted above, it appears that if you actually remove them, we jump from 19 to 17.

[GoSkins561]

What kinds of things can the common man not afford in Europe?

The system is designed so the middle class can only afford certain things, if you want filet mignon or nicer clothing, it is not a necessity, therefore you pay extremely high sales tax on a already expensive item.

I will use Germany as an example. They have a 19% value added tax, which is the same as sales tax in the United States for most goods and services outside of your basic necessities which is 7% on selected goods and services.

[techboy]

The system is designed so the middle class can only afford certain things, if you want filet mignon or nicer clothing, it is not a necessity, therefore you pay extremely high sales tax on a already expensive item.

I will use Germany as an example. They have a 19% value added tax, which is the same as sales tax in the United States for most goods and services outside of your basic necessities which is 7% on selected goods and services.

I'm quite aware of the VAT, thanks. What I'm asking you for is specifics on what it is you think the common European is missing out on.

[Predicto]

If you take away homicides and auto accidents we rank 1st in life expectancy.

As usual, this has become the "just make stuff up" thread.