Is this the future of U.S. health care?

[AztecWilliam]

Absent some semi-miraculous turn of events, I would say that, yes, this is going to be what health care will look like in the U.S.

www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2013/05/07/the_depressing_future_of_american_health_care_118296-comments.html

AzWm

[azteccc]

How do you reconcile the fact that in every possible indicator of health care quality and cost, countries with socialized medicine rank above the United States? It is easy to nitpick examples and simultaneously claim that every rich person comes here for their elective treatments, but in reality most procedures that people travel to the US are not affordable to you or me anyway.

[AztecWilliam]

May 7, 2013 12:14:25 GMT -8 azteccc said:

How do you reconcile the fact that in every possible indicator of health care quality and cost, countries with socialized medicine rank above the United States? It is easy to nitpick examples and simultaneously claim that every rich person comes here for their elective treatments, but in reality most procedures that people travel to the US are not affordable to you or me anyway.

I'll have to do some research to provide evidence, but this idea that our outcomes are so much worse than in countries with govt. controlled medicine is questionable. For one thing, when you control for deaths from violence, and the fact that some other countries cited are much more heterogeneous in turns of race and ethnicity, our life expectancy proves to be better than the critics of the American system would have us believe. Also, if I am not mistaken, survival rates for some types of cancer are better here than elsewhere.

AzWm