Every nation we compete with starts out with a 7% advantage

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

(Bill Clinton on Meet the Press making a punchy little slogan about the fact that we spend 7% more of our national income on health care than any other advanced nation. Familiar stat well expressed.)

[MannyGoldstein]

1. +1000

That's why we're fucked without single payer.

Quite fucked.

[Warpy]

2. More than that

The rest of the world doesn't have that five sided millstone around its neck.

[glitch]

6. Excellent point. We're way more fucked than 7%.

Top that off with the relentless transfer of wealth to the top 1% since 1980 and we're approaching 99% fucked.

[xchrom]

3. Recommend

[madrchsod]

4. so i guess we`d better eliminate health care!

[WCGreen]

5. How about all the money we spend on the military to keep the

mercantile classes of all countries safe and sound...

[Smashcut]

7. That's because we're not an "advanced nation."

Advanced nations have single-payer health care.

Advanced nations don't think of ways to enrich an insurance cartel at the expense of the public, like ours does.

[Amonester]

8. That 7% more ends up straight into the 2% have's and have-more's

deep pockets.

And that is only for the health care issue.

Some of the other huge overheads that end up in there too : the so-called defense budgets and the too-big-to-fail, thus bailed-out-for-ever-rising-bonuses financial sector.

And it's getting worse every year that nothing serious *enough* is done against them, and strictly enforced publicly financed elections (with severe penalties for criminals) should come first, obviously.

Thirty years of trickle-down BS consequences are ...