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July 3, 2007 Michael Moore criticizes U.S. health care, comparing the systems in France and elsewhere to our own expensive care. He claims our life expectancy is unnecessarily low, and he suggests socialized medicine to solve our problems. First of all, the life expectancy of U.S. "White" females is actually around 79, which is among the highest in the world. You can see this right here (Asian-Americans have similar statistics). Americans (especially men) are to some extent victims of affluence, eating too much and riding too much instead of walking, but European men have comparable statistics these days. The United States is now only about 2/3 "White" according to this source, and the other third is mostly what the Government classifies as "Black" and "Hispanic". Many of those are "underemployed" and not living in married-couple families, for a variety of reasons. Death in that third often comes from violence and accidents related to drugs (including alcohol). This presents a much bigger health problem for Americans than is present in France or other European countries. If we had socialized medicine in America, the costs would be enormous, because the people most difficult to treat (not that entire third, but still quite a large part of it) tend to skip pill-taking schedules and be poorly organized in other ways. It could soak up a really unlimited amount of money, if we tried to provide excellent socialized medicine for our whole "diversified" country. Contrary to Moore's movie, health care is actually not so wonderful in other countries. French, Cubans, Canadians, and British complain bitterly about long delays in treatment. Bureaucratic inefficiencies and high taxes are a big problem in their countries, which would be worse here, with our larger minority population. If you want to see how socialized medicine "sounds good but it doesn't work," wait until the year 2011. That's when the baby boomers will hit Medicare (year 1946 plus age 65). I'm a senior citizen who really loves Medicare, and I wish we could have it for younger people also. But after 2011, it's bankrupt. The advice to the younger generation from your old Uncle Dan is, "Spend less on having fun, and invest more in your pension plan, to pay for extra health insurance later." Better think about that. No Government will be able to bail you out when the ship starts getting swamped. ------------ About the author: Dan Shanefield is a retired engineering professor, who worked at Bell Labs and then at Rutgers University. He wrote the book Industrial Electronics for Engineers, Chemists, and Technicians. Visit his website here. Email: shanefield@ieee.org Comment on this article here! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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