Fucking post eater...  This forum hates my ISP.  We have much in common.

For the second fucking time...

Negative, I'm an Alaskan.

Significantly shorter recap of what I posted last time.  To derail your thread, you'd have to post relevant information.  The cost of health care in Germany is not $264, it's a whole bunch of dead people.  Germany has lower cancer survival rates now than they did in the mid 90's.  It's fucking pathetic.  If you break your toe, no problem.  If you get pancreatic cancer, go home and die.

I already made it slightly more polite, the original version was probably better, I'm pissed off at the number of posts I keep losing.  Death to Hughesnet, by Ruru preferably.

There are no sick people in Baghdad!

Now it stands at ZERO$ net cost for me. Unemployed, until i'm not.

But, (and, this is very important) i've invested plenty over the many years when i worked into two specific  and somehow differently managed "systems"; the Confederate and the Provincial (Québec, btw).

All control of expenses & revenues are handled through state policies & decisions.

In people WE trust.

Gee from your constantly enlightened posts we would never have guessed you were from the state that gave us Sarah Palin's great intellect.

He can see dead germans from his house!

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sorry, couldn't resist.

Interesting information, but not by itself a reason for the US to do (or not do) anything.

Indeed, it is the health of people which should be considered. Ignoring health expectancy, which doesn't take inro account of certain factors, here is an independent research organisation analysis: http://www.commonwealthfund.org/Content/Publications/In-the-Literature/2008/Jan/Measuring-the-Health-of-Nations--Updating-an-Earlier-Analysis.aspx .

The main jist of it, is that the organisation commisioned research for "compared international rates of "amenable mortality"—that is, deaths from certain causes before age 75 that are potentially preventable with timely and effective health care. "

Here, USA is last among 19th advanced countries. For comparison with the British health System, which seems rather to be in the news recently, it is rated 16th. Also for comparison is that the monthly cost of health care per person in Britain per person is £120.77 or $196 at current exchange rates. (From hm-treasury.gov.uk.)

Seeing from the above report, Germany actually has 18% less deaths than USA from conditions amenable to health care such as treatable cancer, diabetes and cardiocascular disease. Turning your argument round, the cost of health care in USA is a whole bunch of dead people.

wow. very interesting and helpful information!

If people would start thinking before they make up their minds, it would go a long way in actually grasping what is read.

The numbers of relevance are the survival rates among those amenable conditions.

The number of people dying from heart disease in this country compared to Germany is irrelevant.  Germans aren't fat, sedintary slobs.  We are number one in nearly every category.  We're heaviest, most sedintary, have the highest refined sugar intake, and the most chain smokers.  That more people die from these lifestyle choices is a given.

She's a valley girl, they have a stereotype for being fluff brained idiots.  Mentioning her intellect is rather unfair of you though.  The current idiot in chief can't talk his way out of a paper bag if the teleprompter goes off.  Brains and politicians rarely coincide.

does health care actually fix anything?

No not at all. it will not make humans healthier in the future if we are stuck in the same patterns as we are today.

what is a better solution which costs less and benefits future generations?

Preventative measures, like educating people through schools and advertising campaigns, to make good lifestyle choices.

Oh come on. You know that's a complete bullshit comparison about the She-Devil in Borrowed Couture and the Secret Muslim Baby-eater currently in the White House. There's a gigantic difference between being a new, deeply bookish president who gets startled when he has to go off-script in a media-hot setting and a woman who until recently thought that Africa was a country.

Hell, lapsed anarchist basher-of-my-own party that I am, I'd also say you're reaching for sloppy rhetoric when you try to call politicians generally stupid. Frequently misguided, far too slavish to buzzwords in headlines, even sackless wonders who almost never have the courage to connect their rhetoric to their policymaking--that, I'll give you. But if they were truly stupid as a class, then armchair idiots like you and me would be able to push them around effectively and get some policy changes we want when either of our respective parties is in power.

Bah. "Our respective parties" is probably the real root of the problem. Our founders made a great mistake in letting their idealism overcome their otherwise remarkable sense of governmental structure. Sure, "faction" is an ugly business at times, but it is even uglier when we're forced by the simple expedient of single-member, winner-take-all legislative districts to pretend that there are at most only two ways of seeing problems.

I'm not sure what the point of this thread is?
The Personal Cost of Health Care, then listings of financial statistics of other countires, then the USA with question marks?
If paying a little extra to enable the less fortunate to received adequete Medical care is a big issue to you then I can only summise you're an uncarring and greedy fool.

Oh, so that's all it is.  Pshaw.  I feel so much better now.

I was baiting psychoak, not trying to reassure anyone. I suspect he understands that I'm in part more 'conservative' than many ditto-heads. For example, I don't care nearly as much about which party controls the White House as I do about the fact that the 20th century saw a slow, steady shift of power from the legislature to the executive, which I believe to be antithetical to both our historical rhetoric about our Revolution and our current claims to be 'leader of the free world.'

I voted for Obama, but I have not spent much time watching presidents on TV since Bush 41. We are not a monarchy. Our chief executive is simply the senior bureaucrat unless we are formally at war, which hasn't happened since the middle of the last century, mainly on account of our sackless national legislature being unable either to rein in the imperial presidency or put their cards on the table and declare war.

@Aroddo: apologies for more or less aiding the threadjacking. I can only say that I've had an unpleasant relationship to cost-benefit analysis since I learned you could specialize in it, mainly on account of important abstract things like love, liberty, honor, and morality being effectively immune to mathematical tools. For some of us in this debate, part of the "personal cost" comes from things like empathizing with an un- or under-insured person, classical 'liberal guilt,' and anger at having witnessed one of those unfortunate instances when a 'wallet biopsy' did indeed provide the deciding factor in a triage decision.

I had to comment about Obama and Palin.  Sorry, but Palin is not a moron.  Despite what your learn about her from Tina Fey on SNL and CNN.

And as to Obama... He honest to god thought there were 57 states in the USA...so... That was not a comedy skit on a late night tv show, that was in a live interview... Without a teleprompter.