Woman gets 47 pound tumor removed thanks to.... Obamacare.

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I don't mind paying taxes to prevent Americans from needlessly dying.

Please tell me you are kidding. Democrats are supposed to be the only people dumb enough to believe that 16% of GDP isn't enough to get the healthcare bills paid.

Translation: this woman dying wouldn't affect me or mine.

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Actually its precisely because our healthcare system is largely privatized that we pay so much in terms of percentage of GDP. All major countries that have UHC pay far less in terms of percentage of GDP.

Actually, private care isn't the reason. About 45%-50% of US healthcare spending is public. If anything, private insurance rates are inflated by government inefficiency, namely below-market reimbursement for Medicare and the double dipping of Medicaid by senior citizens, which creates more lower-middle class uninsured. The unpaid portion of the bills generated by the uninsured and the elderly are dumped onto patients with private insurance or taxpayers. Rising private insurance rates create more uninsured. This is the death spiral we are trying to reverse.

Even assuming your 45-50% figure of public US healthcare spending is correct, arguing that our huge share of GDP spent on medical care is due to that "high" % compared to most other industrialized countries that have a far higher % of healthcare costs paid publically is......."intriguing".

Please stop embarrassing other blue avatars by association.

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Even assuming your 45-50% figure of public US healthcare spending is correct, arguing that our huge share of GDP spent on medical care is due to that "high" % compared to most other industrialized countries that have a far higher % of healthcare costs paid publically is......."intriguing".

Please stop embarrassing other blue avatars by association.

Does anyone on this board look at data? The US Federal Government and several global organizations provide info free of charge. Our public healthcare spending as %GDP or PPP-adjusted-dollars is 3rd or 4th highest in the world, behind Luxembourg, Norway, and Netherlands (depending on the adjustment method).

US bureaucrats use a substantial portion of the $1T public healthcare budget to experiment on senior citizens (Medicare), and then pay for hospice care when the surgery goes awry (Medicaid). Why do you think the original ACA proposal tried to install a government oversight board to cut $500B from Medicare (10 years) by eliminating frivolous surgeries and medical procedures?

At least once a month, a major publication like NYT, WSJ, HuffPo or Washington Post will write an article about how public healthcare works. I suggest you start reading.

<Sigh> I didn't say our healthcare spending as % of GDP isn't high. It is. What I said is how do you explain that as a result of (allegedly) just under half our healthcare spending being public spending, when other countries have a far higher % of healthcare spending that is public, but still keep their GDP share of spending below ours?

I'm not the one with reading comprehension problems here, bubby.

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The issue is than all the countries than you praising, with lower healthcare costs, have a public healthcare system?

So, you want public healthcare in America?

Conversion to public care or single payer is not the pertinent question. Do you think the federal government has the competence to administer single-payer or national healthcare? The obvious answer is "no".

The federal government can't administer the current public health insurance system, which only covers about 1/3 of the population. They spend 1/3 of the Medicare budget on ineffective surgical procedures on feeble seniors during the last year of life, and then they spend about 40% of the Medicaid budget to put them in hospice until they finally expire.

You can't understand the degree of incompetence within the public healthcare system unless you've lived through it or you've watched your family members deal with it. HHS can barely set up a healthcare exchange website.

Which doesn't answer the question: If you claim public spending is the reason the US GDP% of healthcare costs are so high, why are other countries with a far higher public share of healthcare spending able to spend a notably smaller % of their GDP on healthcare.

I'm not advocating single payer or an American NHS; but you're the one who brought this claim up while ignoring the many obvious comparisons that contradict your argument.

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Which doesn't answer the question: If you claim public spending is the reason the US GDP% of healthcare costs are so high, why are other countries with a far higher public share of healthcare spending able to spend a notably smaller % of their GDP on healthcare.

I'm not advocating single payer or an American NHS; but you're the one who brought this claim up while ignoring the many obvious comparisons that contradict your argument.

Their systems cost less money because they ration care, and they don't insure heavily against an inevitable outcome, like long-term care. They also don't give hospitals incentives to stabilize terminally ill people so they can be exported to hospice facilities.

Private insurers ration care everytime they deny claims or treatment, which is often (less so under Obamacare).