[geeks] just to stir things up, a few predictions

[Matthew Braun]

On Oct 19, 2004, at 12:55 PM, Michael Horton wrote:
>
> i beg to differ: john "war criminal" kerry and john "malpractice"
> edwards will do far worse damage than george bush.
> just the mention of socialized medicine (under the previous democrat
> regime) did tremendous damage to the medical field.
> what do you think will happen if the johns put it into place (as they
> have implied this past week)!
> the largest tax increase in the history of the world was implemented
> under the previous democrat regime.
> as a middle class taxpayer, i was clobbered.
> the johns say that they will definitely increase taxes!
> the list of their promised programs imply that the tax increase will
> make the previous one look like nickels-and-dimes.
> where will the middle class be then?


Just to address what I believe is your statement that adopting 
socialized medicine would lead to higher taxes, I want to present a few 
statistics:
	In 2001, at 13.9% the United States had the highest levels of 
expenditure on health as a percentage of GDP of all member states 
(nearly 200) surveyed by the WHO (WHO World Health Report- 2004  
http://www.who.int/entity/whr/2004/annex/topic/en/annex_5_en.pdf)
	Japan, England, and Germany (who I think are pretty much comparable to 
the US in quality of care) spent, in the same year 8%, 7.6% and 10.8%. 
(However, I know that the governmental bureaucracies have can make 
obtaining care more difficult in those countries)

  The private (vs general government) expenditure on health for the same 
year breaks down to:
	US: 55.6%
	UK: 17.8%
	Japan: 22.1%
	Germany: 25.1%

Yet in in the same year, the total tax revenues as percentages of GDP 
were:
	US: 28.9%
	UK: 37.3%
	Japan: 27.3%
	Germany: 36.8%
(Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development, 
http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/22/35/17103874.pdf)

So Japan has a lower total tax burden (although I suspect this may be 
to outrageously generous corporate tax breaks) yet it manages to have a 
health care system which I believe is on par with the US (though 
they're overall far healthier than Americans, so they get to spend less 
on dealing with heart disease). The actual tax burdens are far higher, 
but (and right now I wish I was a statistician) I suspect that when you 
factor in the private contributions which are a form of indirect tax 
("The job pays less, but it's got great health care bennies") the 
actual impact on your pocketbook might not be much at all, if any. I 
suspect that, if the system is implemented properly, costs will fall.

Now, I know: "there are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and 
statistics" and I'm not a professional, but the numbers suggest to me 
that socialized medicine can be implemented without causing an undue 
tax burden for the citizenry.

--
"I must create a system, or be enslaved by another man's;
I will not reason and compare: my business is to create."