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Yes, I am going to do the unthinkable

I am going to recommend that you read a Malcolm Gladwell article. From the latest New Yorker: The Moral-Hazard Myth. An illuminating and surprisingly class-conscious look at why the U.S. health care system is so bad.

Americans spend $5,267 per capita on health care every year, almost two and half times the industrialized world’s median of $2,193... What does that extra spending buy us? Americans have fewer doctors per capita than most Western countries. We go to the doctor less than people in other Western countries. We get admitted to the hospital less frequently than people in other Western countries. We are less satisfied with our health care than our counterparts in other countries. American life expectancy is lower than the Western average. Childhood-immunization rates in the United States are lower than average. Infant-mortality rates are in the nineteenth percentile of industrialized nations...Nor is our system more efficient. The United States spends more than a thousand dollars per capita per year—or close to four hundred billion dollars—on health-care-related paperwork and administration, whereas Canada, for example, spends only about three hundred dollars per capita. And, of course, every other country in the industrialized world insures all its citizens...