Why do people vote for Hilary and Obama?

[famousringo]

It's true that public health care isn't actually free.

It's just massively more efficient.

How about I throw some numbers on this health care debate.

In 2003, health care costs in the USA consumed 15.2% of GDP. This compares to 11.5% in Switzerland, the next highest spender. How big a deal is that 3.7% difference? Well, 3.7% of GDP happens to be the size of US military spending, which accounts for nearly half of global military spending.

http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/abstract/349/8/768

http://www.truthandpolitics.org/military-relative-size.php

All that money must buy the best health care in the world, right? Not so much. A World Health Organization report in 2000 places the US at 15th in the world in terms of goal attainment.

http://www.photius.com/rankings/world_health_systems.html

So where does that money go? Well, a lot gets eaten up by massive administration costs. 31% of US health expenditure goes to pushing paper, compared to 16.7% or Canada's health expenses. Canada spends 9.9% of GDP on health, by the way.

http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/abstract/349/8/768

I'm not going to say that Canada, or other public health care systems are perfect. I think we'd know if somebody had a magic formula. But it's hard to deny there are very real and substantial benefits to having a partially public health care system.

I laughed when Clinton said that her health care plan wouldn't be government run. I translated the statement to be "I'm going to waste huge amounts of time and money pretending to do something about out health care system."

By the way, as of 2005, US health care costs have risen to 16% of GDP.