Guns Versus Caduceus - Health Care Questions

The resistance in the U.S. to a national health care plan makes no sense. And it doesn’t make sense to our European friends we talked with when we recently traveled to Europe. Germany, where we spent most of our time, is considered to have one of the best health care systems in Europe.

Medical News Today wrote that, "France and Germany, which are widely viewed as having among the best health care systems in Europe, with few complaints about rationing of services and queuing, spend 11% and 10.4% of their economic output, respectively, on health care. The U.S., by comparison, expends 16% of its gross domestic product in this area, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.” (Based on a Forbes September article)

October 6 of this year, the PBS published an international health care systems comparison for Japan, the Netherlands, Canada, Mexico and the U.S.

Health care is a right and not a privilege. The quality of health care should not be based on where you work or how much money you make. Although our country is advanced in some ways, we are way behind our counterparts in attitudes and practice concerning health care and capital punishment.

Since I’ve retired from reaching in 2003, my income has diminished. However, even with a reduced income, I’m willing to pay more in taxes to ensure that those who have no health care can. I am not one for statistics, however, if all tax payers paid $100 to $200 more a year in taxes, I’ll bet it would put a big dent in a viable health care fund.

Look at it this way. More than $100-$200 is coming out of our annual taxes to support war. Most people appear to accept their tax money going toward killing people but when it comes to health care for our country, they are unwilling to accept it. They complain about big government.

I’ll bet these same people accept their social security checks though.