Health Care Punishment

• GC
• Ireland

The strangest fact about the dysfunctional American healthcare system is that American taxpayers are ALREADY paying for full universal coverage for every American.

The US federal government already spends more per person on healthcare than any other country except Norway. The difference is that Norway and every other developed country gets full, universal coverage for it’s money. Americans, on the other hand, get deductibles, co-pays, coverage limits, mountains of paperwork, medical bankruptcy, stress, hassle and, of course, big bills for private insurance.

As a percentage of GDP the United States spends about twice as much on healthcare as other developed nations – 16% for the US vs 8% for the others. The extra 8% of national income that Americans spend on healthcare reflects the political power of those who are making money from the status quo – along with the dysfunction and idiocy of those who support them, of course. I’m not sure whether to call that extra 8% the ‘ideology tax’ or the ‘stupid tax’.

Americans are being bled dry to pay for the greed of powerful vested interests in healthcare, ‘defense’, criminal ‘justice’ and other areas of US dysfunction. And the strangest thing is that they just seem to accept it.

Nov. 18 2013 05:14 am.