Monday, July 27, 2009

Healthcare


Click on the bar chart to the right and it will enlarge. It comes from the OECD Health Data 2009. It is shocking.

What it shows is that in the USA we have fewer hospital beds per person than they have in Great Britain, Italy, or the Netherlands. America has far less than half as many hospital beds per person as in France or Germany. The same applies with numbers of doctors. In America we have fewer doctors per person than in Great Britain, Italy, the Netherlands, France, or Germany.

The absolute killer is that in America the current healthcare expenditure as a percentage of GDP is double that in Britain and MUCH higher than in France, Germany, The Netherlands, and Italy.

Barack Obama is right about one thing: The current bastardized system that was implemented by the right wing, profit-mad Republicans is well on its way to bankrupting America.

The solution in America really is quite simple. There already exist several government financed universal health care systems in the USA. One applies to congressmen and senators, another covers the military, and the largest government paid, single payer universal health care system provides health care to everyone age 65 and older. It is called Medicare.

This is not difficult to solve. Honest. Make everyone in America an automatic participant in the single payer health care plan called Medicare.
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