by Brian on January 9, 2004
Kevin Drum picks up on something Matthew Yglesias noted a while ago: the American government spends more per person on health than some governments that run quite good comprehensive public health systems. The data almost suggest that public health care is more efficient than private health care. Of course, if America gets better quality health care for all the extra $$$$$ it is spending, this conclusion wouldn’t follow. There’s remarkably little actual data to bear that out, but if you trawl through Kevin’s comments board you’ll find lots of people reporting fourth- or fifth-hand anecdotes to that effect. So I thought I’d add my own little anecdotes, comparing the only two countries I’ve ever spent significant time in. My non-expert observations suggest
1. A person with private health insurance in Australia gets higher quality health servives than a person with private health insurance in the US.
2. A person without private health insurance in Australia gets much higher quality health servives than a person without private health insurance in the US.
3. In some cases (e.g. mine) a person without private health insurance in Australia gets slightly better health servives than a person with private health insurance in the US.
[click to continue…]
by Kieran Healy on January 9, 2004
An interplanetary trial balloon is floated as the AP reports President Bush “will announce plans next week to send Americans to Mars and establish a permanent human presence on the moon”. “Bush won’t propose sending Americans to Mars anytime soon;” the report says, “rather, he envisions preparing for the mission more than a decade from now.” So it’s not clear whether there will be an explicit JFK-like commitment with a deadline (“The goal, before this decade is out…”) or just increased funding with Mars as the long-range but indefinite target. The report notes that “Bush has been expected to propose a bold new space mission in an effort to rally Americans around a unifying theme as he campaigns for re-election.” I can think of more important things that Americans might rally around besides a manned mission to Mars, and better reasons for space exploration than a feel-good election-year promise.
Will the project be funded by a series of aggressive tax cuts? Will it alienate voters who think the Earth is 4,000 years old? Will the Free State Project Libertarians ditch New Hampshire and realize that this is the chance they’ve been waiting for to really start again from scratch? Questions, questions.