Which country has the best Health Care System?

[Bono]

I sure know Portugal isn't the one.

[Bono]

IS health insurance really that expensive there?
Here we have private hospitals and providers aside of the public ones, adn an health insurance for those, for, say a mom-dad-kid family, costs about €1000 a year.

[Bono]

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It is. If you break you're leg and get it fixed you don't have to pay anything... not even insurance beforehand.
Makes sense to me.

What about taxes?

[Bono]

Dick Cheney, during the Republican Convention: "Our nation has the best care in the world".
Did it really speak about this extremely uneven system, with tens of million American without social security cover, and its inflation of the costs? In 2000 WHO classified the best systems. The United States arrives at... the 37eme row (France first). The United States are first ... only on the amount of the expenditure of health per capita (France is fourth). A statistic that Cheney could meditate: the childhood mortality is in the United States of 7 per 1000 (against 4,5 in France): not better than in Cuba!

That is because helthcare is not a right, adn the US still understand that. You don't have a right to take other people's money and use it to your health. Public health care i the moral equivalent of going around mugging people on the street to pay for a surgery on you.

[Bono]

you're too individualist. I do not think that one can be happy whereas people die for lack of care.

If one would feel trully unhappy, he himself would help those people. I ask you, what virtue is there in doing good with other people's money?

[Bono]

If government is responsible for our health, what will stop them from banning cigarettes or alcohol, or whatever else they consider unhealthy? People need to be responsible for themselves, actions and body.

And unconditional insurance is a bad idea.

I agree that people need to be responsible for themselves, but surely the government has a duty to educate? I guess it all comes down to your philosophy.
The Western European philosophy is based on social responsibility....(an individual is a member of a society and has a responsibility to that society and the society has a responisbility to the individual).
The American philosophy is individualism........the individual is supreme.
It seems to me, that the well being of the society is not the guiding principle. It is a "winner takes all" culture.

Vive la difference

That is becuse they well-being of the society is impossible to measure, since the society is made of individuals, and those individuals have subjective notions of what is best for them.

[Bono]

I am sorry but I cannot understand that... A great country it's a country which each one of you have built, rich and poors. Why only the rich person benefit from it ?

What makes you think only the rich benefit? You seem to think that we have a few rich people here and that everyone else is a dirt-poor serf. That's not the case. I am not aware of anyone starving to death in America. And I think it would be very rare to find people dying because they were denied medical treatment. Although, perhaps in some of the countries with socialized medicine people die while on the waiting list for treatment.

I can assert they do.

[Bono]

It is not.  It is a bunch of people voting to steal money from certain individuals and give it to other individuals.  That is criminal.  This is why I'm opposed to income tax and sales tax.

And then every other law on the books is practically criminal, too, by that definition - it doesn't just stop at money.

Look, Richius, I'm not going to argue with you about this any more; you're too stuborn and you would degenerate into name-calling and ridiculous arguments; I'm not in the mood for that.  I'm just more charitable-minded, I guess, and I happen to think that majority rules.  Congress and the rest of us should be willing to create a system to help the less fortunate. 

So 50% plus one could just vote to kill the other 49,9999999999999%?

[Bono]

So 50% plus one could just vote to kill the other 49,9999999999999%?

That is his basic principle.  The majority is voting away the rights of the minority.  This is what Hitler did, and what is currently happening with social security and national health care in Canada.

OK, guys, help me out here; I'm a little confused as to why this is labeled "my basic principle".  We're talking about democracy - close votes happen!  Fifty-one percent of the voting population decided who would be president for 100% of us.  The Senate and the House often have close votes.  Forget money, taxes, etc. for a minute, and "my basic principle" applies to every vote we make and nearly every vote cast by the Senate and House.  My county voted for a half-cent sales tax increase in November; just because the ones who voted no on it do not like the increase doesn't mean they don't have to pay it - it came to a vote and they lost.

So why is this confusing?  It seems to me that it is the basic democratic principle, not "my principle".  We vote on things, the majority wins, the minority loses and hopes to change things the next time around.  And no one is proposing killing 49.9% of the population - that's an extreme and quite ludicrous comparison, and the comparisons to Hitler don't really belong in a conversation like this either.

That's the point. Democracy is decivilizationg. property isn't safe when any idiot can vote it away from its owner. Imagine a world government based on one man one vote. what would most likely happend would be that we'd get a colaition of Indians and chinese, who would consider the western World was too propsperous, and would decide to take away resources from it to redistribute elsewhere. From the moment the people understand that they can vote for whoever is going to give them more treasury money, the will allways vote for the candidate who will, and that is why a democracy allways collapses due to a oose fiscal policy, followed by a dictatorship. Our rights aren't safe within a democracy. The founding fathers hled democracy in very little comtepm. What they envisioned was a republic governed by a sort of aristocracy, and even that wasn't ideal.

[Bono]

That's the point. Democracy is decivilizationg. property isn't safe when any idiot can vote it away from its owner. Imagine a world government based on one man one vote. what would most likely happend would be that we'd get a colaition of Indians and chinese, who would consider the western World was too propsperous, and would decide to take away resources from it to redistribute elsewhere. From the moment the people understand that they can vote for whoever is going to give them more treasury money, the will allways vote for the candidate who will, and that is why a democracy allways collapses due to a oose fiscal policy, followed by a dictatorship. Our rights aren't safe within a democracy. The founding fathers hled democracy in very little comtepm. What they envisioned was a republic governed by a sort of aristocracy, and even that wasn't ideal.

So, you're not a fan of the American system, then?

Yes, a one-man, one-vote principle in a theoretical one-world government probably wouldn't be great for the West, but that's a made up example that isn't going to happen.  No one is voting away our property to China, no one is killing anyone else; all I recommended was a slight tax increase to fund basic public health services for the poor in the US (and why this bothers either of you perplexes me a little - neither of you lives in the US). 

Wild confiscations of private property and/or monetary assets is not going to happen; we're not a straight democracy - the democratic republican system ensures (hopefully) that those who are dedicated to making such decisions will be careful and thoughtful about making them.  I happen to like this form of democracy - it's fair.  By being a citizen of the US, we agree to be "at the mercy of the vote" and subject to the laws and rules that come out of such votes.

I'm not a fan of democracy. peroid. America is actually one of the least democratic countries, and one that manages to mantain individual rights as well. (which is a good thing).
I'm not sure if it's not that likely to hapen, but that's the logical conclusion of your train of thiught anyways. Democracy can be tolerable, as long as it respects property rights, ie, a means of trading office holders. But what you mean is absoulte democracy, one in which eveything is subdued to the will of teh majority. Even Rosseau, one of teh first advocates of democracy, knew it could only be practical in small jurisdictions, where everybody knew each otehr and knew that those better of were so because they so deserved, and the temptation to strip them away of their property would't exist.
But you defend that the majority be ale to take away people's property to give themselves ammenities, be it health care, education, etc, all paid for by sticking the guns of the government  to those better off.

[Bono]

I'd prefer a system with at least some social equity to none though. If you can have a fair healthcare system that works properly, do it. Australia's system isn't perfect, but it is better then America's and it works AND Australia has posted budget surpluses for something like 12 of the last 15 years.

Yea, but the US can defend themselves, while you suck up un ANZUS for defense. If every country that prides in having a budget surplus, versus "dumb Bush, who can't even balance a budget", had to depend on themselves for defense, I'd like to see how many would still have a balanced budget.

BTW, don't worry about pointing out Portugal, we have a deficit even without big defense spending.