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My question, to opponents of universal health care, is this: How do you explain the fact that universal health care ACTUALLY WORKS in every country that impleme

My question, to opponents of universal health care, is this: How do you explain the fact that universal health care ACTUALLY WORKS in every country that implements it in some form? How do you explain the fact that your simplistic market-based analysis fails to predict the overwhelming success of universal health care at both delivering comprehensive health coverage and at efficiently allocating resources where they're needed?

yummyfajitas 17y ago
You seem to be ducking the question. In any case, I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "actually works". I'll assume "actually works" means "life expectancy in the range of 70-80, no major health disasters." The answer is simple: medicine beyond the essentials (trauma care, birthing, vaccines) doesn't improve health very much. It does almost nothing compared to flush toilets, clean water, refrigeration, vaccines and other benefits of being wealthy. In fact, most variations in medicine can't be shown to have a statistically significant effect on health. So maybe some of those countries do a great job, maybe they don't. It doesn't much matter either way. See this source for a good review of the literature. http://www.cato-unbound.org/2007/09/10/robin-hanson/cut-medicine-in-half/ http://www.cato-unbound.org/2007/09/10/robin-hanson/cut-medi... Now can you answer my question? I'm asking because I'm genuinely curious about the worldview of government health care proponents.