{"id":836,"date":"2009-09-09T09:45:44","date_gmt":"2009-09-09T14:45:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.moorezilla.com\/blog\/?p=836"},"modified":"2009-09-14T10:52:26","modified_gmt":"2009-09-14T15:52:26","slug":"alternative-to-obama-care","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.moorezilla.com\/blog\/alternative-to-obama-care\/","title":{"rendered":"Alternative to Obama-care?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Philip Greenspun of MIT and Web development fame is working on a draft of an essay on how to reform health care. Sound like a dry topic? It isn’t. Here’s a sample from the rough draft:<\/p>\n

… Suppose that you could give up two years of life expectancy in exchange for the following: paid-for housing, paid-for cars, paid-for college, paid-for vacations, paid-for children. Instead of living 78 years, you’d expect to live 76, but you’d never have to work full-time and could probably pack a lot of enjoyment into those 76 years because you wouldn’t be a slave to day-to-day expenses.<\/p>\n

Let’s compare the U.S. to Mexico. Mexicans share our continent, our love for soda and corn syrup, and our tendency towards chubbiness (source<\/a>). We spend approximately $8500 per year per American on health care and live to the age of 78. A Mexican can expect to live to age 76. How much do Mexicans spend on health care? Their per-person GDP is only about $13,000 per year, and they supposedly spend about 6 percent of GDP on health care (source<\/a>) so $800 per person is a good estimate.<\/p>\n

An American will spend $600,000 in order to add two years to the end of his life. Those two years may very well be spent in an intensive care unit or a nursing home and certainly are not likely to be spent on the tennis court or visiting the Venice Biennale.<\/p>\n

For that $600,000, an American could have the following:<\/p>\n