You're both wrong and right, and it really depends on what you're trading in compared to what you're getting new as well as the kinds of environmental damage you're looking at ...

Cars from the early and mid 1990s are (roughly) as fuel efficient as similar cars are today and have very similar emmissions' standards, so the input costs from moving to a new car are probably far greater than the savings that will ever be produced. Essentially, consider how little gain (from an environmental perspecitve) there would be from running a brand new Honda Civic compared to a civic from 1994 assuming similar builds for the car. Where you might seem big improvements would be from older cars and from people using this as an opportunity to switch to driving something much smaller and more fuel efficient. Many people who drive older cars today are driving SUVs primarily because they were very common throughout the past coule of decades; and if someone made the choice to drive a Ford Fusion rather than a Ford Explorer the savings from the new car would more than cover its own production.

HappySqurriel according to the articles I've read the criteria for this program are pretty strict, the car you give up has to do less than 18 miles per gallon (and the new one above some other amount).

According to my calculations in European units that's 13 liters per 100km, which is... terrible mileage compared to today's cars.

Work on lowering costs.  Even then not everyone will choose healthcare.  Most people who don't have healthcare actually can afford it... and they don't want it.

Most mid/full sized sedans on the market today are only (optimisitically) rated at 11L/km city driving, and more realistically get 12L/km or worse in real world driving conditions. Compared to sub-compacts like the Honda Fit this is awful, but a large portion of fuel economy is simply the weight of the car, and we haven't seen much of an improvement within the classes of cars when it comes to fuel economy.

When you compare this to European cars you also have to consider that Europe primarily uses Diesel fuel where you can travel much further on a single liter of fuel than you can with gasoline.

Happy Squirrel, you arent thinking about some basic fundamentals of healthcare. First of all, different types of cancers are different from place to place. America's desire to tan may lead to higher rates of cancer in the form of skin cancer, but that is cheap and easy to treat. Perhaps American food has more carcinigens in them, causing more harmful cancers.

Also, private healthcare is a profit driven business, which is why, for instance, America focuses on treating Diabetes with new instruments and medications while Europe and Canada are focused on healing diabetes with new surgeries and research.

You cant make money off of people who heal from a disease, but if they keep that disease you can make a lot of money.

I think you're overestimating the fuel consumption of new cars... A few years ago my father sold our Alfa Romeo 155 which was using way too much fuel, and that was like 10-11 liters per 100 km at most (not a diesel car).

Right now he has a diesel car (Nissa Primera full-sized) which uses 5-7 liters per 100 km, I bet a gasoline one doesn't use more than 9 liters even in city driving.

Don't even get me started on government programs.

The government already ruins the post office and the DMV, don't let them ruin the doctor's office as well.

I have NEVER gotten out of a DMV in under 2 hours, and I don't even live in a big city. It doesn't help that most government workers are dumb as nails.

Ok I should stop before I get too angry.

The V6 Honda Accord is rated at 11L/100km, and (being that my driving habits are worse than the worst case for most city driving estimates) my 2006 Ford Fusion averages around 12L/100km in the city. Now the question I would have about your father's Alfa Romeo is whether he was driving mostly in the city or the highway, if he is driving mostly on the highway 10 to 11 L/100km is fairly bad, if he is driving in the city it is fairly decent.

Certainly, when you move to a car like the Honda Fit from the V6 Accord you get a major boost in fuel economy but the Accord is 46% heavier than the fit because it is a dramatically larger car. Even your Primera is a much smaller and lighter car than the Accord, and you have a major boost in fuel ecconomy because it is a diesel.

Basically, I'm not saying 13L/100km is good fuel economy but it is very good fuel economy for a full sized sedan (or larger car) and most compact and mid-sized sedans don't do much better today. Certainly there are cars that have dramatically better fuel economy but there are massive trade-offs when it comes to the size, performance and safety of the vehicle when you go in that direction ... I know people will debate safety given crash test results, but crash-tests are testing accidents into stationary objects or cars of similar size; and (in reality) there is a massive difference in safety between an Accord hitting a F150 and a Honda Fit hitting the same F150 under the same conditions.

I get out of the DMV really fast.

They built one buy me in this little out of the way shopping area... and nobody even knows about it.

The other DMVs.  Or rather BMVs by me are horrible.

HappySqurriel I'm going back home tomorrow and I'll make sure to check with him (it's possible I'm remembering some numbers wrong).