AOC's latest gaffe shows just how expensive Medicare for all would be

[ag]

I am amused how many ostensibly conservative and America-first posters seem to advocate for the US to continue to subsidize the rest of the world by providing research and developments others are using, but US (and, to a significant degree, US government) pay for. Where is this sudden internationalist impulse coming from?

[ag]

While, I would agree, US may be the best place to be a doctor or a medical researcher, I am not sure it is the best place to be a patient. In terms of life expectancy at birth US is somewhere between Taiwan and Bahrain, closer to Eastern Europe and Latin America than to the major Western European or Asian nations. And citizens of those nations get a few extra years of active life at a fraction of the cost. Unless one cares more about an MRI scan than about being, actually, alive, I do not see why would anybody express so much pride over the availability of the former. I mean, it is not like being inside an MRI machine is so much fun

BTW, it used to be that US was doing quite decently for the elderly, so that, conditional at being alive at 65 US was the place to be (which was a funny argument, considering those over 65 have always been enjoying Medicare), but I have just checked the latest data, and even there US is no longer doing that well. And, arguably, end-of-life expenditures in the US are doing a lot more to tax inheritances than all the estate taxes combined.

[ag]

this only makes sense if you believe the difference in life expectancy is 100% health care related.

It is not. But  there are no obvious other factors that would explain away the mediocrity of the US record. I mean, Latin Americans are poorer, less educated, eat equally fatty food, suffer from more crime (including murder), etc., etc. Yet, the gap in life expectancy between US and, say, Mexico, has been shrinking for a long time and is now pretty small. Adding the usual other explanatory variables would make it only worse.