Socialized Health Care in the USA

[kandrathe]

Competitive? Are you joking? Businesses of any kind provide a good at a price.

Yes, and then a competitor offers a better service or finds a more efficient method and lowers the price.

If they provide less or less quality of the good (evidenced by lower life expectancy, higher infant mortality, etc...) at a higher price (massive spending on health care) than even the much-reviled socialism, how on earth is that a "highly competitive business model"? It's a bloated, rent-generating monster.

Lower life expectancy and slightly higher infant mortality (6/1000 vs 3/1000) does not correlate to less health care, or poorer health care. The US infant mortality statistics are skewed due to two factors, a) more attempts to save midterm premature births and b) the larger influx of emigrants than any other nation in the world.

People in the US are less healthy, but that might be because we've automated, or shipped away all our strenuous labor and can't pull ourselves away from the idiot box to exercise.

Every developed country on earth manages to hire doctors and nurses. Are you expecting them all to retire or something? Or throw away a decade of education and retrain? Or move to the Cayman Islands?

Let's see 4 years of pre-med, plus 4 years med school, then barely paid residency to earn the same as an engineer who gets a degree in 4 years. I think I'll go the engineer route and cut down the student loans, and the 16 hour shifts.

Nursing Shortage Expected To Grow Annually Through 2016, According To U.S. Bureau Of Labor Statistics