Peter A wrote:

> The US spends a lot more, per capita, on health care than any other
> country.

...and this includes a LOT of treatments and surgery done on people here
that in other countries would be never be performed. I heard it just the
other day when one of the Spanish speaking trauma doctors (don't know
where he is from, darn it) compared the all out efforts being provided
to save the life of a patient with a self inflicted gun shot wound and
he said "in my country he would be placed in a quite room and receive
minimum care, mostly just some pain meds until he passed away." So yeah,
I can see where we do often spend money others don't. We give liver
transplants to patients whom would never get them elsewhere. We treat
drug addicted newborns who also sustained fetal alcohol syndrome because
we seem to have a LOT of young women doing stupid stuff during pregnancy
and the outcomes are bad. I'm curious if other countries have the same
per capita rates ? We give granny dialysis when other countries
wouldn't dream of using the finite healthcare resources for an elderly
patient needing such budget breaking treatments....
So I suspect there is more to this story than just "the US spends more..."