In a staggering setback for the United States, our Covid19 death rate is 2.4X Canada's. But, Canada spends less than half what we spend per capita on healthcare. After only six months of Covid19, we are now at about a half of our WWII casualties and climbing.
Why? We don’t have a healthcare system and Canadians do.
For our lack of a system, we spend 2.1X what they spend per person on healthcare and we are dying off at a much higher rate. As we saw in The American Death Curve, our over-spending on healthcare is $1.7 trillion a year. That is a staggering 2.3X our military budget. Straight out the window.
If we got Canadian price-performance, we could put all that money back into our pockets and have half the Covid19 mortality. We would live significantly longer.
The question for our policy makers is simple. Why can’t you do this for us?
The numbers are the numbers and right now they look really, really bad for you! Why can’t you bring us a healthcare system that delivers? Why are you quite content to see so many Americans pay so much more—an extra $5,200 for every American man, woman and child—just to die at such extra high rates?
You would think that, with so much money at stake, every pol in the country in this election season would be trying to outdo the next in the race to Canadian price-performance.
But, from the far right to the center right (there is no left in the U.S.), you won’t hear a word, even a hint, of what to do.
Why? Just as we don’t have a healthcare system, we don’t have an education system either. If someone like Dumb Don, who cannot read or write and whose ability to learn stopped when he was eight or nine years old, can get the University of Pennsylvania to graduate him, American education is unaccountable.
We have no idea what students are taught or what criteria are used to graduate them. The likelihood that Don Trump would be able to understand the workings of Canada's superior healthcare price-performance is nil. Penn? What do you have to say?
Take Georgia Governor Brian Kemp. He tried to prevent cities and counties from requiring masks in public. How did he get out of primary school knowing so little? How could someone get to be a state governor understanding so little about science basics? Why would Kemp try to ensure the worst possible price-performance for the people of Georgia? Who did he think would pay for making us so much more worse off?
Kemp and Trump are simply not educated enough to be elected officials. And, it appears, they do not know it. Nor, it seems, does anyone else. That’s how these people get elected.
It is fair to conclude that very few Americans know about Canadian healthcare price-performance even though the two countries share the longest border in the world. And, of those who do, many fewer could tell you how it works and why it is such a price-performer. From AOC to Moscow Mitch, you won’t hear a word.
From Canadians. however, we do hear. They have loudly closed the world's longest border to Americans because of our uncontrolled Covid19 infection rates. Until Americans put a healthcare system in place, it is hard to see that border opening again. Or to see Americans being allowed to travel anywhere in the world as most countries have followed Canada's example.
It is quite likely that we will exceed our WWII casualties and you still won’t hear even a hint from our pols of what we must do to outperform our northern neighbors. Americans will keep dying at crazy rates. Our allies will see deep into our highly-exposed, systemic weaknesses. Our foes will see the same thing. We won’t be coming back.
Amazing.
Update August 20, 2020
Here's a whopper for you: Florida, with 57% of the population of Canada now has more Covid19 deaths than Canada. New Jersey, with 24% of Canada's population, has 67% more deaths.
September 22, 2020
It gets worse. With Covid19, we are now at 50% of our WWII casualties. Canada, which was in the War more than two years longer than we were, has only 20% of its WWII casualties. Don Trump has lost control. He must take responsibility for the difference in deaths: 125,000 Americans have died because of his incompetence.
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