@Cmdr:
How does your chart stack compared to total US Debt (including citizens) to domestics and foreigners?
Just curious.
The pie chart, as a whole, accounts for ~$3.1 trillion. Our total Federal debt as of Feb. 2009 is ~$10.8 trillion. The Federal public debt is ~$6.5 trillion. Public debt is all federal debt held by states, corporations, individuals, and foreign governments, but does not include intragovernmental debt obligations or debt held in the Social Security Trust Fund.
@Cmdr:
Anyway, you asked for my definition of “better.”
Better: To be a better health care system it must have superior technology, superior medical knowledge, superior medicine, superior infant and elderly survival rates and/or superior disease and injury survival rates.
Obviously, a system does not have to be superior in all aspects to be better than another system. Being superior in significantly more aspects than the other system would allow the system to be called better.
For instance, if the Nation of Ik had a universal health care system but had no aspirin or other drugs to treat illnesses and injuries, the doctors were trained witch doctors with no university level medical training, but everyone had equal access to medical treatments, it would not be “better” than the system in a Nation of Ugtir where every medical professional has to graduate in the top 50% of their class to get a medical license, drugs and medical technology is plentiful and available, but people had to chose between hospital and doctor A vs hospital and doctor B where A may be more or less expensive and qualified than B is.
In the above example, with two made up, non-existent nations as examples, it is obvious that the health care system in Ugtir is far superior, and thus better, than system in Ik.
Given that Ugtir has a far superior system, one which is not perfect, one where some people just plain out cannot afford the absolute best medicine available for their needs, but one where the medicine needed at least exists to be bought, why would they voluntarily hamstring themselves and move to the system employed by Ik?
I agree that, by your definition, our health care system is better (than most at any rate). Somebody else’s definition may also include the ability to keep costs down so that everybody can afford it. But that is a semantic argument, which will get us nowhere fast. What you seem to be assuming, though, is that the quality of care will necessarily decrease as an effect of nationalization. How did you reach this assumption?
EDIT - Your last post pretty much answers my question. Commentary to follow…