Reply #106: And that bias would be the result of your extensive research into the pros and cons of...

[warren pease]

...privatized airlines and for-profit medical systems vs. their publicly managed and funded counterparts?

Or would that be because of your unremittingly horrible experiences flying Air France and suffering the indignities of being treated by the WHO's top-rated national health care system in the world rather than the 37th?

Note that the US, with its usual obnoxious and unjustified self-satisfaction, smugly maintains its privatized medical system -- which is also the most expensive medical system per capita on the planet (more than $7,000 annually) although outcomes have become uncomfortably third-worldish over the past couple of decades -- is still the greatest system on earth.

And why would that be? Well shit... It's American, so it's the best by definition.

And other such ideological drivel that diverts attention from unflattering facts like this study that tells us about 22,000 people die in the US each year because they don't have medical insurance.

Their only access to the US medical system is the ER, which is great for trauma but isn't very good at handling a cancer patient's long-term treatment program.

No matter; if you can't pay the obscene premiums, deductibles and copays, tough shit. You're not worth saving because you're not contributing your share to increase profitability for an industry that grossed $2.2 TRILLION in 2006. And then squandered around a third of that money -- a modest $733 billion -- on crap that has nothing to do with performing their alleged goddamn jobs: paying medical expenses for rate payers.

So what's the net result of this disastrous scam? Here's what the WHO had to say in this news release:

"The position of the United States is one of the major surprises of the new rating system," says Christopher Murray, M.D., Ph.D., Director of WHO's Global Programme on Evidence for Health Policy. "Basically, you die earlier and spend more time disabled if you’re an American rather than a member of most other advanced countries."

So how's that life, liberty and pursuit of happiness charade working out for you here in privatization nirvana?


wp