Talk of The Villages Florida - View Single Post - Sweden's (wonderful?) national health care.
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Old 12-12-2011, 07:02 AM
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Originally Posted by KatzPajamas View Post
Life expectancy? How is that dependent on the cost of our healthcare system?
Do a little research on the American Diet and its affect on the human body and disease processes. While you are at it, look at who does research and sets the medical parameters for certain medications (hint-BIG PHARMA). That is just the tip of the iceberg. I'd be happy to give you a few links, but they may or may not pass your filter for biases. OK, I can't resist...check out the work of Linus Pauling in regards to preventing heart disease.
Oh I certainly agree with some of the points you make. I suspect that we agree more than you might think (a sentiment I also shared with RichieLion).

But I'll explain the example I gave.

When you pay more for something, you expect more (and better). If you pay for a Lexus, you don't expect a Chevy Metro.

What is the purpose of health care? Among other things, it's to help us live longer, healthier, happier lives.

It doesn't really bother me that we pay more than other countries. I can accept that. What DOES bother me is that we pay MORE THAN TWICE of what the #2 country pays - and we don't get better care. Ten times as many people go to foreign countries for treatment than come here. That, in and of itself, should tell you something is wrong.

Every single metric I can find has us trailing the pack. Sometimes there ARE some mitigating factors (especially when it comes to birth statistics - we try harder to save preemies and the mortality rate there is high - so our infant mortality rates tend to skew higher - but other countries might not count that as a 'live birth'). But I'm tired, for example, of seeing every other country get bargains on medications that we don't get. If Pfizer can sell something to Canada or Germany at a profit for less than half what they charge us, there's something wrong.

The government used to have a rule in procurement that any vendor was required BY LAW to match any 'best price' when selling to the government. IN other words, you couldn't sell your product or service to the government at a higher price than you sold it to others. You didn't have to match some OTHER vendor's price, just your own.

Apparently that doesn't apply to things like Medicare.