US Health Care Out-Performs English Model

The US health care system certainly has its problems. It is expensive, fragmented, and contains within it a multiplicity of perverse incentives and misguided policies. It is NOT capitalistic at all with more than 50% of health care expenses paid directly by governments and only 1 of every 8 health care dollars paid directly out of pocket (there is usually a middle-man).

Nonetheless, as a recent report from the respected RAND Corporation points out, Older Americans are not as healthy as their English counterparts (due to lifestyle), yet they live as long or longer. While RAND doesn’t come out and say it, the difference seems obvious: the US health care system still has capitalist, free market impulses while the English system is totally socialized.

While ObamaCare does not move us completely to the English model, it does move us dramatically towards greater government control. Hopefully ObamaCare is either repealed or overturned and we don’t have to find out if American seniors’ life-spans are shortened under the new, more socialist ObamaCare model.