Other countries spend less per capita on healthcare because of a couple of reasons:
1. what they provide is inferior to what we have in the USA
2. Big pharma is ripping us off in the USA
I'll agree with number 2, which begs the question of why we tolerate it. Oh, yeah. "Freedom!"..
But if what they provide is "inferior", why are they living longer and having a lower infant mortality rate?
Countries like Japan and Sweden have small homogeneous populations, they do not have ghettos where kids are killing each other before they reach the age of 20. They do not have 20 million illegals who come here sick and bring our stats down. Its not an apples to apples comparison.
While 30,000 gun deaths a year (most of them not "ghetto kids") is truly horrible, it is only .01% of the population. Certainly NOT enough to really move the life expectency numbers. But I'm glad you are finally seeing the light on gun control.
Compared to 46 million uninsured and 25 million underinsured, which comprises 25% of the population which doesn't have clear and easy access to diagnostic, preventitive and long term care. I think that does quite a bit to skew the numbers.
Of course, the fact too many of us are overweight and too many of us smoke is part of the problem, but if government tried to do more about that, we'd hear a lot about "Freedom" and where Michelle Obama can put her carrot sticks.
as to big pharma, they average 35% corporate profits, oil companies average 8%, defence companies average 7%, but the left demonizes oil and defence and never says anything about pharma. The same drugs are made and sold in canada, the UK, and other countries for much much less. Where is the outrage from the left?
Actually, the left demonizes big pharma quite a bit... not sure where you've been.
But here's the thing. In Canada and the UK, the government buys the drugs, and then distributes them for free.
In the US, the drugs are paid for by a series of government, private insurance and out of pocket, adding to the expense and allowing big Pharma to name its own price.
Case in point, when Bush did one of the few decent things of his presidency, Medicare Part D, the only way Big PHarma went along with it is if the government agreed not to buy the drugs in bulk, which would have saved hundreds of billions.