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Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mary Cluney who wrote (9270)	9/10/2009 4:23:42 PM
From: Lane3	1 Recommendation Respond to of 42652

life expectancy is extended (far greater) as a result of spending. Yes, exactly. Now you get it. The only problem with this logic is that life expectancy correlate with health care spending. That's not a logic problem. Arguing that spending money on prevention reduces health care costs has the logic problem. What you're calling a logic problem is, instead, an unfortunate reality. Our two objectives are at cross purposes. We can't have both extensive preventive care and lower costs. If we want to have gold-plated care for everyone, it will cost more, not less. We can reasonably make either choice. What we can't do logically is claim both at once.

To: Mary Cluney who wrote (9270)	9/10/2009 4:43:19 PM
From: i-node	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

I sure can't improve on what Lane is saying. I'm not sure I understood your post, though. From my POV while life expectancy may correlate with health care expenditures within a country, there are so many exogenous variables it is meaningless when trying to relate it to some other nation on that basis. How can you possibly look at life expectancy as a measure of health care system effectiveness when America has the greatest per-capita KFCs of any country in the world? While our health care system surely does a better job than any in the world, it takes a "whole lotta medicine" (sorry, Randy) to offset our collective addictions to fast food, drugs, guns, fast cars, and any number of other things that cause our life expectancies to be shortened.