While pitching government-run healthcare, Progressives are fond of citing longevity statistics that purport to show longer lifespans for Europeans (and Japanese) living in countries with government-run healthcare. Why would us lunkhead Libertarians and Conservatives be opposed to living longer?
The Progressives are much less fond of explaining why well-to-do individuals from the self-same countries choose to fly to America for their serious health problems. Why would they do that? And how can this behavior be reconciled with the statistics on longevity?
The answer lies in the way those longevity statistics are collected, and with cultural differences between the countries. A very simplistic way to put it is this: if you take away deaths caused by cars and gunshots, then Americans live longer than anywhere else on Earth. In particular, Americans who have long-term health issues (such as cancer or diabetes) have far better outcomes than non-Americans. Those are the things our healthcare system deals with, and it deals with them better than any government-run system does.
Well, for now, anyway. Obamacare is about to “fix” that, unless we manage to get it repealed.
There's a great post on this subject at CoyoteBlog, with much more detail...
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