Originally posted by sigma:
Well your assumption is slightly flawed.

You're assuming that Life Expectancy and Overall Health are directly determined by the health care system. While it is of course true that health care affects those two greatly, a larger determination is our lifestyle.

Let's face it, Americans as a whole lead much more unhealthy lifestyles than the rest of the industrialized world. So, while other countries might not fund their health care systems to the extent that we do in the US, our health care system is starting behind the curve because our citizens tend to live so much more unhealthy lives.



From a libertarian point of view, personal responsibility for one's own health is perhaps the most important issue. If people don't take care of themselves, who are they to complain about our health system or about health insurance?

But this ignores the actual facts on the ground, and it ignores prevailing American values. The facts are that we have over a hundred million uninsured people in this country. They don't get much preventative health care, and they spill into emergency rooms when they are extremely ill, at overwhelming cost to all of us. They don't buy private health insurance because it is extremely expensive; there is no program for them to regularly contribute a reasonable amount to their future health care.

As a nation, we are not libertarians. Our system of values obligates us to help the sick. As a result, all of those uninsured people will be an enormous public burden until we reform the health care system. We need a publicly organized health care system so that people can contribute regularly to the cost of their care and get preventative medical care before they end up in emergency rooms and on welfare rolls. A properly organized and managed public health care system could save us money and serve as an expression of our most civilized values.