Monday, August 10, 2009

Healthcare in the United States of America

According to a New York Times article today by Nancy Folbre, who is an economics professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, approximately 80% of the roughly 46 to 50 million people in America who do not have health insurance are American citizens.
LINK: http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/10/the-citizenship-of-the-uninsured/?partner=rss&emc=rss

The racists of the right wing Republican variety are well known xenophobes, and they are perfectly happy to sit by and watch the remaining 20% slowly suffer and die. They will sit there drinking their beer and watching TV and laugh at the suffering of these people. These immigrants by and large are hard working people doing the nastiest jobs at the very bottom of the pyramid too.

So most of the people who are excluded by the current health care system are citizens of the USA. And the vast majority of people who are seriously underinsured are also Americans. But you can be sure that these ignorant, reactionary racists will not even notice these statistics. These types of people are not known for their intellectual brilliance or open mindedness.

Click on the chart to the right so that it will enlarge. This chart tells it all. In America we are horribly wasteful of the large amount of money that we spend on healthcare, and even though we spent vastly more than any other civilized country, we have ended up with a health care system which produces much poorer results.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-