Yeh, I'm old enough to remember

Americans are supposed to have short memory spans.  But I remember.

In 1985, US Presiden​​t Ronald Reagan introduced a group of six visiting Afghan mujahideen warriors to reporters on the White House lawn.  Reagan proclaimed, "These gentlemen are the moral equivalents of America's founding fathers."

Those warriors were, of course, leaders of the groups that became the Taliban and al-Qaeda.  Neither of those groups would exist today if not for the help of the US, which was determined to hand Russia a defeat in Afghanistan as humiliating as the American defeat in Vietnam.  The Americans were driven by egoism. By hurt pride.  Osama bin Laden wasn't in that group of six at the White House that day, but he was one of those mujahideen leaders, and he was an ally of the United States, trained, armed and funded by the Americans.  Oh, the irony of it is so rich.

And, oh how we laughed when Leonid Brezhnev's soviet army suffered a shameful defeat at the hands of those mujahideen warriors in 1989.  Tucked tail and fled.

Listen.  Yeh, I hear it, too.  That's the sound of Russian laughter, and I can't help thinking, "he who laughs last, laughs best."

That is what happened, 36 years ago.  The wind was sown ...


And, in case you don't remember, and you need to be reminded, neither the Taliban or ISIS existed before the US got involved in Afghanistan, funding and training and supplying weapons to the mujahideen freedom fighters who were determined to expel the Soviet Union from their country.

Remember the Khmer Rouge?  

In 1970, Richard Nixon and then National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger sent US troops on secret missions into Cambodia to clean out Viet Cong sanctuaries and destroy their supply lines and started bombing Cambodia (a war crime of the first order).  The Khmer Rouge communists, who were very few in number, with very little popular support, used the heavy American bombing as a recruiting tool among the common people in the countryside, which is exactly what happened in both Afghanistan and Pakistan (if not in much of the Muslim world).

It took a scant five years for the Khmer Rouge to grow from a few scattered camps numbering an estimated 4,000 into the guerrilla army of 70,000 that seized the Cambodian capital in 1975 and began their "purge" of the population, which was basically a purge of anyone who supported or worked with the foreigners who invaded their country.   You know, traitors.  Mostly they killed the people who lived in the cities and who cared more about making money than in making a patriotic defense of Cambodia's sovereignty.

Isn't that what's happening, right now, in Afghanistan?

The Khmer Rouge did not come to power because the US stopped bombing Cambodia ... they came to power because the US started bombing Cambodia.

By the same token, it has been the US occupation of Afghanistan and the propaganda value of its indiscriminate use of aerial and drone bombing that has strengthened the Taliban for the past 20 years.  And, it was certain that when the US tucked tail and left the country in defeat, that the Taliban would "purge" the infidels in their country; it is not because the US failed to "stay the course."  It is because the Americans made the enormous mistake of trying to do what no military power has done in 1,000 years:  conquer Afghanistan, the "Graveyard of Empires."

War is a question of morality; and it always will be

The Rev. William P. Mahedy was a Catholic chaplain in Vietnam for a decade.  In his book Out of the Night:  The Spiritual Journey of Vietnam Vets, Reverend Madedy told of a soldier, a former altar boy, who asked him: "Hey, Chaplain, "how come it's a sin to hop into bed with a mama-san but it's okay to blow away gooks out in the bush?"

Mahedy wrote, "Consider the question that he and I were forced to confront on that day in a jungle clearing.  How is it that a Christian can, with a clear conscience, spend a year in a war zone killing people and yet place his soul in jeopardy by spending a few minutes with a prostitute? If the New Testament prohibitions of sexual misconduct are to be stringently interpreted, why, then, are Jesus' injunctions against violence not binding in the same way? In other words, what does the commandment 'Thou shalt not kill' really mean?"

"In theological terms, war is sin," wrote Mahedy. "This has nothing to do with whether a particular war is justified or whether isolated incidents in a soldier's war were right or wrong. The point is that war as a human enterprise is a matter of sin. It is a form of hatred for one's fellow human beings. It produces alienation from others and nihilism, and it ultimately represents a turning away from God."  ["nihilism" here means, simply, the rejection of all moral principles — CAulds]

The wars that the US is involved in (soon to be twenty years in Afghanistan, having accomplished ... well ... nothing) has exposed the truth about America's Christian fundamentalists ("christianists", not Christians), the hollowness of their morality, the hypocrisy of their religiosity.  On the subject of war, one that is without doubt a question of morality, America's leading religious leaders and institutions have been silent, not willing or brave enough to take a moral leadership position.  And now it is best they remain so, as they have nothing to say to us now.

Shockingly a few have even tried to defend ​​the indefensible.  To defend sin.  To affirm that evil committed in the name of good is not evil (a violation of one of the very most basic tenets of Christianity).  And the gap between the values that evangelicals claim, and the reality of their actions in the past 20 years, is an ugly open oozing wound.

I say, once again, principles that can be easily changed and manipulated by others, for whatever purpose, good or evil, aren't true principles at all.

How Canadians and American differ on universal health care

​​​​​​I was 48 years old when I immigrated to Canada (from a Deep South US state) in 2005, with my wife and daughter (who was 14 at the time). Under the auspices of the NAFTA treaty (as skilled work immigrants) we became eligible for Medicare after a three month wait. And we have no complaints about Canada's system of universal health care.

When we came to Canada, Canada had a new conservative government and "privatisation" of the health care system was a hot topic. The Obamacare" debate in the States educated a lot of Canadians about our own health care system. And there are few Canadians now who support a privatized health care system like the one “enjoyed” by Americans.

I remember a conversation I had with a young consultant in my office about how Americans and Canadians are different.  We agreed that Canadians are in most respects (he said 75%, I said 90%) just like Americans ... but where they differ, the differences are profound.
​​
"It's not conspicuous," Jason said, "it's inside ... it's in our psyches."
​​
"How do you mean?" I asked.

Jason said, "Americans are all about themselves, what they can get for themselves, it's always me, me, me ... Canadians are more community minded."

I had to agree with that.  I think that's why Canadians are far more willing to embrace a system like our single-payer health care system; not because it works so well for us, individually, but because it works so well for all Canadians, many of whom, particularly those living in some of the world's most remote regions, would have no decent medical care without it.  

A big difference in Canadian and American attitudes toward universal health care coverage is that Canadians do not fret excessively about people taking advantage of social services.  Undocumented immigrants, ​​or Reagan's "welfare queens", or whoever; that "straw man" is a very American creation.  It is simply accepted by Canadians that there will be abusers; that is no reason to eliminate a system that is beneficial to everyone else.  In other words, Canadians are reluctant to "throw out the baby with the bathwater."

I dealt with my own cognitive dissonance, when I crossed the US-Canadian border, by thinking this way:  So what if someone else's kid gets free hospital treatment for a head injury?  That doesn't take anything from me.  Because one day it might be my kid's turn to ride in that ambulance.  That's the way a healthy society works.  And that's how we fight back against the insatiable greed of the one-percenters. We are our neighbor's keeper.  We're all in this together.

Canadians don't worry excessively/compulsively about "those people" who are getting something for nothing. 

It's interesting that I had to immigrate to another country to learn what community is really all about.

"Oath Keepers" still exists?

I was surprised, in January, to learn that Oath Keepers (founded eleven years ago) still exists.  The group was founded in March, 2009 by Stewart Rhodes, a lawyer and former US Army paratrooper, coincidentally with the inauguration of President Obama.  Oath Keepers organizes former and current military and police to be prepared to resist all unconstitutional orders. As a result, they have been attacked by everyone from Bill O’Reilly on the right (who called them "anarchists") to Bill Clinton on the left (who linked them with "terrorists").

The "Oath" in Oath Keepers refers to the oath military servicemen and servicewomen and police take to defend the constitution. Stewart Rhodes claims he founded Oath Keepers to help "defend the constitution from its enemies," most of whom, he believes are in or around the government.

Rhodes thinks neither liberals nor conservatives recognize the need to limit government to Constitutional bounds. "Picture a Venn diagram with 2 overlapping circles," he says. "People in each circle only object to what's going on when they are not in power. But there is a third section that, no matter who is in power, they care about the constitution and distrust those in power. My goal is to grow that third part of the population.” Among the "consistent Americans," Rhodes includes feminist author Naomi Wolf, Congressman Dennis Kucinich, and Congressman Ron Paul.  Two of them are liberals, the third a Libertarian; none of them are rightwing. Oath Keepers isn't partisan.

That all sounds great.  "We're not a political organization!" they claim loudly, "We champion liberty, American values, and upholding the Constitution, regardless of which political party is power."

Oath Keepers' lists Ten Orders We Will Not Obey. These include: "We will not obey orders to disarm the American people, conduct warrantless searches, detain American citizens as 'unlawful enemy combatants' or to subject them to military tribunal, impose martial law or a 'state of emergency' on a state, or invade and subjugate any state that asserts its sovereignty."

But wait.  Wait.  Just hold on a minute ... aren't these the very things the US began doing, in the name of its "War on Terror", 8 years before this organization was conceived?  Then why was this group founded only after the political party in power shifted?

The are the very same rightwing "patriots" who meekly and submissively accepted a major shift toward a police state 17 years ago.  They were silent about all of these things ... completely silent:

• presidential claims of unlimited executive power
• limitless imprisonment with no legal recourse
• warrantless intrusive searches
• warrantless wiretaps
• creation of massive databases on citizens
• repudiation of habeas corpus
• redefining cruel and unusual punishment as "enhanced interrogation"
• suppression of dissent
• arbitrary no-fly lists
• endless overseas wars

Isn't it ironic that this group was perfectly ok with all of these things as long as they were being done by a large, powerful, and growing federal government that was in the control of "their" political party?  Then, suddenly, after a change of power, they discovered their principles?  Just like that?  Or did they only oppose all these actions by the federal government because they don't like the political party in control?  That would make their motives political, not principled. That's loathsome.  They think all these things are fine, when they are being done to "others."  But if they think they're the ones who might be the targets, then, and only then, they choose to be upset?

These are people, who love to stroke each other at silly flag rallies where they talk about the right to own assault weapons.  But at a time when they needed to take a stand; at a time when true courage and principle were required; they stood down, and remained silent.  Compliant.  Submissive to authority.

When it took courage to stand up and oppose the actions of a runaway government; they were silent.  When public opinion was against those of us who opposed America's perpetual series of wars; they were silent.  When it took guts to oppose the things they claim to oppose; they remained gutless.

These aren't patriots at all; and they are certainly not leaders; these are weak followers of authority; the tools of that authority.

And now they want our respect NOW?   I don't think that's gonna happen.

Respect has to be earned; it's not a right.  And that, friend, is a true American principle.

 

Oath Keepers and True Patriots in 1941

 

 

Canada's single-payer health care system (does it improve our overall health ?)

Younger Americans have made sure that universal single-payer health care is part of the discussion Americans are having about what they want their nation to be.  The reason? Young Americans are learning more about universal health care, and realizing its value. They are also not frightened by the word "socialism."

I immigrated to Canada in October 2005, along with my wife and daughter. In the 15 years we've lived here, our experience with Canada's system of universal health care or, as it is known here in Canada, simply "Medicare", has been a positive one.

It is important to understand that, in Canada, the only people who are allowed to make decisions about who receives medical care are physicians.  In the United States, by contract, HMOs and other private medical insurers do indeed make many such decisions about who gets what care (it's probably more appropriate to say "who gets denied the care they need). In Canada, medical decisions are left entirely up to doctors, and there are no requirements for pre-authorization whatsoever.   If your family doctor says you need an MRI, you get an MRI. Like I did after a severe concussion four years ago. An emergency room doctor called a Moncton New Brunswick hospital, and I got an immediate appointment for an MRI the following morning. Straight to the head of the line. My "ability to pay" was not a consideration. In the US, if an insurance administrator or HMO rep says you are not getting an MRI, then you're not getting one regardless of what your doctor thinks — unless, of course, you pay for it out of your own pocket.  I bet you there are far more Americans paying for necessary medical procedures out of their own pockets than there are Canadians who find it necessary to do that.

The health system of an entire country can't be evaluated by measures like "MRI machines per capita" or perhaps, "number of hospital beds per capita", not if the use of those machines and beds is rationed by ability to pay for them.

There are statistics that are generally accepted as valid measures of the overall health of a population.  What are some of these and, in the aggregate, which population fares better by these measures, that of the US or Canada?


 

Infant mortality rates (the number of infants who died under the age of one year, per thousand)

USA        5.3 deaths/1000

Canada   4.3

Source:  CIA World Factbook

The probability of a newborn making it to age 65

                    Female       Male 

USA               85.7%      77.4%

Canada          89.3%       82.3%

Source:  https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Health/Probability-of-reaching-65


Life expectancy at birth for the total population (male and female), considered a good indicator of overall health
(The gap in life expectancy between Canada and the United States continues to widen)

USA          78.6%

Canada     81.9%

Source:  OECD List of Countries by Life Expectancy (2016)


And, my own favourite statistic: expected number of healthy years of life (because I don't want to live long; I want to live well).
Healthy life expectancy (HALE) is the average number of years that a person can expect to live in "full health"

USA         66.1 years

Canada    71.3

Source:   World Health Organization HALE Index (2019)

 

Should most Americans care about the rest ?

I immigrated to Canada, from a Deep South US state, in 2005, along with my wife and my 14 year old daughter.  I was 48 years old, and I now have long personal experiences with the medical system in both Canada and the US. 

I would never suggest to anyone that better medical care or facilities or equipment or professionals is available anywhere in the world than what is available in the US.   The problem, in the US, is that access to that medical care is increasingly rationed based on ability to pay for it, and a growing number of Americans are finding themselves forced to forgo necessary care for financial reasons. 

I was one of the lucky ones, too ... I had a lot of career success; I wrote a best-selling technical (Linux) book in 2000 ... but after my wife's colon cancer experience (which gave us those famous "pre-existing conditions") and my being caught in a corporate "downsizing", I understood that it would not take much of an emergency to put us in a very bad situation.  I could not ignore how many Americans suffered from no fault of their own ... and I changed my attitudes dramatically.

The best measure of the greatness of a nation (in my opinion) is in how it treats its citizens who are the weakest, most vulnerable, the elderly, the infirm, the handicapped. 

The US is losing something that is a lot more important than their economic and military dominance of the planet ... Americans are losing their claim (in the eyes of the entire world) to being a people of compassion.

Is it worth it?  I don't think so.   I think it's yet another in a series of very bad choices.

Indeed ... most Americans are probably in very good shape.  As long as they choose not to care about those who are not as fortunate, most Americans have no reason to hope for change.

But "most" is the problem.  "Most" excludes millions of Americans.  So the divide is really between those who think that those millions of Americans don't count ... and those who think they do.

I think they do matter ... because the measure of the greatness or goodness of a society is in how well it treats its most vulnerable; its infirm, its weak and elderly.  It's poor.

America is trying to determine whether it will be great and good ... or sell its soul to the highest bidder.  America is in the process of making that choice, whether people are aware of it or not.  And the choice is profound, because it will set the country on a course that may prove impossible to reverse.

That's why the opponents of the health care have resorted to a campaign of lies and fear rhetoric.  They do not use fact or reason, or offer alternative solutions.   Because they have already made their choices, and an honest, open, fair-minded debate is not in their best interest. 

What do you believe?

The climate models have been uncannily accurate

For what it's worth, any claims you may have heard that there is a gap between the major climate model projections for global temperature and actual observed temperatures are false.

In the chart below, a composite model of climate change projections is compared to four of the most widely-respected datasets of actual, measured, and globally averaged temperature measures:

UK Meteorological Office/Hadley Center's Climate Research Unit HadCRUT5

NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI)

NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) GISTEMP 

Berkeley Earth http://berkeleyearth.org/

The black line on the chart is the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 3 (CMIP3), which combines multiple projections/predictions into a single projection.  The gray area represents the area of 95% certainty around that single projection (essentially, it encompasses 95% of the variability in the various models, most of that variability is based on different scenarios for the future, such as population growth/decline, increase/reduction in the use of fossil fuels).  

Although neither is used in the chart, the datasets of both Japan's Meteorological Agency (JMA) and the EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) are in close agreement with the others.

Climate models and projections of global warming have proven to be extremely reliable.

A nation's health care system reflects the values of that society

This editorial appeared in Newsweek magazine 11 years ago.  It expressed the viewpoint that a country's health-care system reflects the societal values that predominate in that country.  Examples are provided. That article is still relevant and it is still available online.

 

UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE IS A MORAL CHOICE

http://www.newsweek.com/univer sal-health-care-moral-choice-7 9223

The design of any country's health-care system involves political,

medical, and economic decisions. But the primary issue for any

health-care system is a moral question: should a rich society provide

health care to everyone who needs it? If a nation answers yes to

that moral question, it will build a health-care system like the ones in

Britain, Germany, Canada, France, and Japan, where everybody is

covered. If a nation doesn't decide to provide universal coverage,

then you're likely to end up with a system where some people get the

finest medical care on earth in the finest hospitals, and tens of

thousands of others are left to die for lack of care. Without the moral

commitment, in other words, you end up with a system like America's.

 

 

I was 48 years old when I immigrated to Canada in 2005, along with my wife and daughter (who was 14 at the time). Canada had a new conservative government when we moved here, and "privatization" of the health care system was a hot topic. The "Obamacare" debate in the States caused a lot of Canadians to educate themselves about our own health care system. And that education has been of immeasurable value to  Canadians.

 

Under the auspices of the NAFTA treaty (as skilled work immigrants) we became eligible for Medicare after a three month wait. And we have no complaints.

 

We've been in Canada now for 15 full years; we have used three different hospitals, emergency services, and specialists in genetics, gynecology, and oncology.  We have nothing but praise for the medical care we've received.  

Waiting lines for non-essential medical care have never been a problem for us, not in this province, but I have heard stories of people having to wait for some procedures.  

The Canadian single-payer health care system is often criticized for long wait times for non-emergency medical procedures.  It is true that any non-emergency surgery, though, is likely to put you on a waiting list.  But in an emergency — a real emergency — you go straight to the head of the line, if your doctor says you need a procedure; you get it.  Without waiting.

In Canada, medical decisions are left entirely up to doctors, and there are no requirements for pre-authorization whatsoever  If your family doctor says you need an MRI, you get an MRI.  I did, immediately, in August 2012, after a serious accident on the farm.  No "waiting list".  In the US, if an insurance administrator or HMO rep says you are not getting an MRI, then you're not getting one regardless of what your doctor thinks — unless, of course, you pay for it out of your own pocket.  Which is why far more Americans are paying for necessary medical procedures out of their own pockets than there are Canadians who find it necessary to do that.  

Two-thirds of all bankruptcies in the US are the result of medical expenses.  That's over 500,000 Americans who go bankrupt due to medical bills each year. The number of medical bankruptcies in Canada is precisely zero.  What is that worth to any society?

Just Read: Dark Mirror: Edward Snowden and the American Surveillance State (2020)

I just finished reading Barton Gellman's book Dark Mirror: Edward Snowden and the American Surveillance State which was published last May.  

Wikipedia calls Baron Gellman "an American journalist and bestselling author known for his reports on the September 11 attacks, on Dick Cheney's vice presidency, and on the global surveillance disclosure."  

Barton Gellman knows Edward J. Snowden personally.  I read his book for the answers to three questions:  1) what did Edward Snowden reveal to the American public? 2) Why did Snowden reveal these previously concealed truths? and 3) is Edward Snowden a hero, or a traitor?

The book is large, with an extensive section of notes.  It was a challenging read.

This is what I learned.

What did Snowden reveal ?

The first of the Snowden documents that was publicly released was a Top Secret, compartmented presentation from the National Security Agency, only one month old.  Under the cover name PRISM, it was revealed that the NSA was siphoning data from tens of thousands of accounts from the American-based internet giants: Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL, Skype, YouTube, Apple, as well as a service called Paltalk.

Another NSA report revealed that the NSA's acquisitions directorate sent millions of records every day from internal Yahoo and Google networks to data warehouses at the agency’s headquarters at Fort Meade. In the preceding thirty days, the report said, field collectors had processed and sent back 181,280,466 new records—including “metadata,” which would indicate who sent or received emails and when, along with content such as text, audio, and video. 

The National Security Agency had secretly broken into the main communications links that connect Yahoo and Google data centers around the world. By tapping those links, the agency has positioned itself to collect at will from hundreds of millions of user accounts, many of them belonging to Americans

The NSA harvested millions of address books at data crossing points around the world. Many of them, inevitably, belonged to Americans. The web did not respect geographic boundaries. Just because collection happened abroad did not mean the data was foreign.

During a single representative day, the NSA’s Special Source Operations branch collected 444,743 email address books from Yahoo, 105,068 from Hotmail, 82,857 from Facebook, 33,697 from Gmail, and 22,881 from unspecified other providers, according to an internal PowerPoint presentation. Those figures, described as a typical daily intake, corresponded to a rate of more than 250 million address books a year. 

American accounts were certain to be scooped up. The NSA believed the law entitled it to pretend otherwise. When information passed through “the overseas collection apparatus,” the official told me, “the assumption is you’re not a U.S. person.” That was indeed the formal rule. In the absence of specific information to the contrary, according to the court-approved targeting rules, “a person reasonably believed to be located outside the United States or whose location is not known will be presumed to be a non–United States person.”

Even when the analysts explicitly described intercepted files as useless for intelligence purposes, the NSA retained them. The contents had an intimate, even voyeuristic quality. They told stories of love and heartbreak, illicit sexual liaisons, mental health crises, political and religious conversions, financial anxieties, and disappointed hopes. They included medical records sent from one family member to another, résumés from job hunters, and academic transcripts of schoolchildren. In one photo, a young girl in religious dress beamed at a camera outside a mosque. Scores of pictures showed infants and toddlers in bathtubs, on swings, sprawled on their backs, and kissed by their mothers. In some photos, men showed off their physiques. In others, women modeled lingerie, leaning suggestively into a webcam or striking risqué poses in shorts and bikini tops.

All of those examples were from non-targets.

Why did Snowden reveal what he did?

History has not been kind to the belief that government conduct always follows rules or that the rules will never change in dangerous ways. Rules can be bypassed or rewritten.

Within living memory, Richard Nixon had ordered wiretaps of his political enemies. The FBI, judging Martin Luther King Jr. a “dangerous and effective Negro,” had used secret surveillance to record his sexual liaisons. A top lieutenant of J. Edgar Hoover invited King to kill himself or face exposure.

Snowen wrote: “While it is discouraging to think that you cannot be completely safe, the fact that I’m walking free today, the fact that I’m still able to communicate with you, it shows that there are cases and there are circumstances where if you do things right, if you do things carefully, you can win. Not because you’re invincible but . . . you can literally win. You can beat them. One of the very interesting things about doing the right thing is you have no trouble sleeping. You have untroubled nights. It really hasn’t been the giant nightmare people assume it would be. For me, in terms of personal satisfaction and accomplishing the mission, the mission is accomplished. I already won. As soon as the journalists were able to work I got everything I wanted. I didn’t want to change society. I wanted to give society the opportunity to change itself."

Hero or traitor?

The dynamic is beginning to change now. We are shifting it. We’re basically reclaiming spots and making parts of it more private again. Edward Snowden shifted popular culture. He brought about legal, diplomatic, political, and legislative challenges to the prevailing model at the NSA. Alongside all that, and perhaps most significant, came demand for greater resistance in the private sector against NSA bulk surveillance techniques. Security and privacy became marketing points for the internet giants. Google accelerated its plans to encrypt all its services for consumer and business customers.

“I am not convinced that shadowy figures pose a greater threat

to security than information control, total surveillance, and

permanent national militarization.” — Edward Snowden

How does the US health care system measure up to others ?

​My wife, my daughter, and I have been in Canada now for 15 years, and I can no longer imagine my life without Medicare.  I have become a Canadian, through and through.  Or, just maybe, I always was Canadian, but didn't realize it until I was 48 years old.

Here's what I believe:  Access to essential medical care is a basic human need and I believe it is a human right.

And, I might add, I have absolutely nothing but the highe​​st praise for the medical care we've received here in New Brunswick.  We've had excellent and prompt care from specialists (oncology, radiology, dermatology, and neurology), from our family doctor, and from blood clinics and emergency services.  Our experience may not be typical, but it is my first-hand experience.  It's what I know to be true.  New Brunswick's Medicare system is far from perfect, I know that, but flaws in the Canadian system do not "prove" that the American medical system is better.  

Canada's health care system is truly excellent.  But eleven years ago, during the debate on the Affordable Care Act, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) made a speech on the Senate floor in which he insisted that Americans will never accept a health care system like those of Great Britain, Canada, and New Zealand.  Really?  I think he's wrong about the American people.   I know he's wrong about the "terrible" health care systems of the three countries he picked to compare with that of the US. 

Actually, though, it wouldn't matter what three countries he picked, since in every other developed country in the world, health care spending is lower than it is in the United States, and results are better than those of the United States.

But Mitch McConnell chose Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom to make his point.  That wasn't an "error of judgment."  It was a display of his ignorance.  It was a very stupid thing to say.  But he did say it and, so, let's look at some measures of the quality of healthcare in just those three countries, and compare them to the same results for the United States.  

Let's start with per capita health care spending, how does the US stack up against the other three?

United States: $11,072
Canada: $5,418
United Kingdom: $4,653
New Zealand: $4,204

2019 data, US dollars
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_health_expenditure_per_capita
 

Total health care spending as a percent of each nation's GDP:

United States: 16.0%
Canada: 10.8%
New Zealand: 9.2%
United Kingdom: 10.0%

Source:  https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.XPD.CHEX.GD.ZS


Infant mortality rates (the number of children, per thousand who were born live, who die within their first year of life)

United States: 6.5
Canada: 4.9
New Zealand: 4.7
United Kingdom: 4.3
 
Source:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_infant_mortality_rate#Under-five_mortality_from_the_World_Health_Organization


The probability of a newborn making it to age 65:

Canada: 82.3%

United Kingdom: 81.5%
New Zealand: 80.9%
United States: 77.4%

Source:  http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_pro_of_rea_65_mal-health-probability-reaching-65-male


Life expectancy at birth for the total population (male and female), considered a good indicator of overall health.  The gap in life expectancy between Canada and the U.S. continues to widen.

Canada: 82.4 years
New Zealand: 82.3 years
United Kingdom: 81.3 years
United States: 78.9 years

Source:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy


And, last of all, this is my own favourite statistic, the expected number of healthy years of life?

Canada: 72.3 years
New Zealand: 71.6 years
United Kingdom: 71.6 years
United States: 68.1 years

Source:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy#List_by_the_OECD_(2016)  Health-Adjusted Life Expectancy (HALE)



Per capita healthcare spending by country

What can *I* do to help mitigate global warming?

 ​Several people have asked me the question, "What can we do about the climate crisis?" or sometimes they ask, "What are you doing, Charles?"

As Naomi Klein pointed out in her 2019 book On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal:  

The hard truth is that the answer to the question "What can I, as an individual, do to stop climate change?" is: nothing.

You can’t do anything. In fact, the very idea that we, as atomized individuals, even lots of atomized individuals, could play a significant part in stabilizing the planet’s climate system or changing the global economy is objectively nuts. We can only meet this tremendous challenge together, as part of a massive and organized global movement.

Individual actions are important, they are responsible, and they inspire others to do likewise.  

The fossil fuel industry wants everyone to feel guilty because they aren't doing enough as individuals; the truth is ... that just takes the guilt off their own shoulders, which is where it belongs.  Just like the tobacco industry, forty years ago, funding smoking cessation programs (for individuals).

Become part of a growing global social movement for substantive structural change.  Educating yourself is the most important thing you can do.  The essential facts about climate change are readily available, they are irrefutable, easily read, and easily understood.

And never forget that reality always has the final word.

Americans are paying too much, for too little

On 26 June 2008, in testimony before The President's Council on Bioethics, Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, a primary care physician, stated:

Now, it turns out that medical bankruptcy is, as I said, half of all personal bankruptcies. Millions of people each year are affected by medical bankruptcy, but 76 percent of people who were in medical bankruptcy in our study had health insurance at the onset of the illness that bankrupted them.

So insured people have an issue, too, if they have a prolonged, serious illness. They can't work. They have lots of co-payments, lots of deductibles. They can end up in bankruptcy, as well.

 

Dr. Steffie Woolhandler is also an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard and co-director of the Harvard Medical School General Internal Medicine Fellowship program.  Her testimony was removed from the government website by the Trump Administration, but you can still view an archived copy on the Internet Wayback Machine.

Most Americans don't realize how badly flawed the medical system is in their own country and how many Americans go without adequate medical care as a result.  Even though the US spends more on health care, both per-capita and also as a percentage of its national GDP, than any other developed nation in the world.  According to the OECD, health-care spending in the US was 17.7% of US GDP in 2019 (source).  That's far more than any other country, nearly 50% more than was spent by the next highest country on their list. 

Americans spend nearly twice as much as the average developed (rich) country ... but they die 1.7 years earlier.  You find something wrong with that?  Every reasonable person does.

Total Health Spending / Government / Voluntary, US dollars per capita, 2019

With so much wealth spent on health care ... are Americans healthier than people in Switzerland, Germany, Canada?  In what way could that be measured? Perhaps by life expectancy? Infant mortality rates? Prevalence of obesity? Heart disease death rates?  

It's not that health care in the US is bad, actually, it is the best available anywhere.  The problem is that the system is so inefficient that Americans pay far more for their health care than is, apparently, necessary.

Nearly half the counties in the US don't have a single ob-gyn providing maternity care (source).   In a for-profit health care system, doctors go where the money is.  In the US, where healthcare is apportioned by ability to pay, some people get the best care in the world, and immediately.  Millions go without.  Many put off necessary health care they can't afford.  Many die in "waiting lines" for health care they will never get.

What Americans have been doing for generations doesn't seem to be working anymore.  Is there a better way?   A reasonable person has to wonder.

Resource:

U.S. Health Care from a Global Perspective, 2019: Higher Spending, Worse Outcomes?

January 30, 2020
https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2020/jan/us-health-care-global-perspective-2019