I've made health care outcome and finance tables http://mindstalk.net/socialhealth here, from CIA and WHO data. Anti-universal people will claim our system is better at treating the seriously sick -- better survivorship rates once diagnosed. I don't know if that's true; if true, I wonder if it accounts for perhaps lower rates (or later dates) of getting sick in the first place, thanks to more universal screening. There are other contortions people will do to justify why the wealthiest nation is the least healthy, which just make me think that the problem might be with the entire American way of life rather than just our healthcare.
Have you seen pie charts of federal expenditures? 1040 booklets used to have some in the back. Wikipedia's got one http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget,_2007 Paul Krugman called the feds "a pension plan with an army", and it fits. Top expenditure is SS, followed by defense and Medicare. 80% of the budget is SS, defense, Medicare, interest, and safety net stuff like food stamps for mothers with children. As far as "waste", Medicare has 1-2% overhead, SS is probably similar -- all it does it cut checks and review disability applications -- the others you can judge for yourself. Everything else -- NASA, EPA, highways, pork barrels, Israel, FEMA, TSA, NSF, etc., all that big and sprawling -- fits into 20%.
One can argue for dumping a lot of the other stuff on regulatory or freedom grounds, but from a pure taxpayer POV, the only way to make a big difference is to cut off old and disabled people, followed by cutting off children and shrinking defense somewhat. Anything else is noise in the data.
Universal health care would mean combining the Medicare and Medicaid slices, then increasing them somewhat, but private premium payments would be going down at the same time, possibly faster than taxes went up given relative overhead.
It can be tempting to think we shouldn't be paying for the poor choices of bad mothers, but the children will get born anyway. Certainly some will, even if some others are born just for the checks, as some conservatives claim. And if they don't die off, the deprived children grow up to affect the rest of us.
Re: holy crap, I hit the character limit.
Have you seen pie charts of federal expenditures? 1040 booklets used to have some in the back. Wikipedia's got one http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget,_2007
Paul Krugman called the feds "a pension plan with an army", and it fits. Top expenditure is SS, followed by defense and Medicare. 80% of the budget is SS, defense, Medicare, interest, and safety net stuff like food stamps for mothers with children. As far as "waste", Medicare has 1-2% overhead, SS is probably similar -- all it does it cut checks and review disability applications -- the others you can judge for yourself. Everything else -- NASA, EPA, highways, pork barrels, Israel, FEMA, TSA, NSF, etc., all that big and sprawling -- fits into 20%.
One can argue for dumping a lot of the other stuff on regulatory or freedom grounds, but from a pure taxpayer POV, the only way to make a big difference is to cut off old and disabled people, followed by cutting off children and shrinking defense somewhat. Anything else is noise in the data.
Universal health care would mean combining the Medicare and Medicaid slices, then increasing them somewhat, but private premium payments would be going down at the same time, possibly faster than taxes went up given relative overhead.
It can be tempting to think we shouldn't be paying for the poor choices of bad mothers, but the children will get born anyway. Certainly some will, even if some others are born just for the checks, as some conservatives claim. And if they don't die off, the deprived children grow up to affect the rest of us.