Richie, I must admit that I went a bit beyond arithmetic in my math studies. I did take a number of courses in statistics, as well.

Honestly, I'm not impressed by your anecdotal references--all negativer of course. There may actually be positive feelings by some Brits about their healthcare system, but we'll never read about them in your posts.

I do wish we base our discussions on the many meaningful statistical studies done of the various healthcare systems in the world. For quite awhile the health of U.S. citizens, as measured by a variety of factors, has ranged from a high of 11th to a low of 34th among the developed countries in the world. Those studies were conducted by legitimate organizations with no axe to grind.

Other statistical studies clearly show that the U.S. spends far more per capita on healthcare than any other developed country. In fact, our spending per capita is double that of the country in second place! Of course, it should be noted that the U.S. is the only country among the developed countries of the world that relies so heavily on for-profit insurers to fund our healthcare costs.

Lastly, there is unanimous consensus that our spending on healthcare is increasing at an unsustainable pace. Some projections that I've seen have healthcare spending consuming a proportion of our GDP that clearly can't be sustained within the next decade or so.

So rather than responding with flip anecdotes, why not a serious discussion on how our spending on healthcare can be reduced without seriously impacting on the good things being accomplished by our system?