Sandy -

Although it doesn't show up in the OECD PowerPoint presentation, based on the graph in the StarTribune graph of DRUG SPENDING per capita, although while the U.S. spends at the highest rate in the world, the absolute difference between the U.S. drug expenditures and the OECD average was only $430 per capita, while total U.S. health expenditures per capita exceeded that of the next highest country (Norway) by $2,527 and the OECD average by a whopping $4,306.

So, of the U.S. total amount by which U.S. per capita drug expenditures exceed OECD averages, pharmaceuticals make up only 10% of the difference.

I honestly and truly believe that even controlling for all of the greed and avarice in our system - when it comes at least to treating those in a position to pay - the most important variable is obesity and all of the chronic health conditions that follow it. Based on the diabetes map, I can only imagine how high per capita Saudi health expenditures must be!

I addressed Japan in my initial post: it gives the best care of all to the the least obese population this side of North Korea. Look again at thing like it's average length of hospital stay and numbers of MRI/CT scanners per capita.

And as for Canada and the EU, they are delivering rationed care to all. It's worse care than you, I and Dubious currently enjoy, but it far exceeds what easily 35% of the U.S. population has to live with, or not. Witness our below average life expectancy rate.

If we just brought down the level of obesity to OECD averages, we easily could fund a National Plan at the Norwegian rate, and all would live like kings. Of course, to due so, we would have to return to the progressive income tax rates under which this nation rose to greatness during and after the presidency of that great liberal, Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Republican controlled Congress he brought into office with him. The only thing that tax structure couldn't accommodate was the Vietnam War on top of increased social programs, witness the Sequellae of the Seventies.

Remember the great Oliver Wendall Holmes, when he rebuked a secretary’s query of “Don’t you hate to pay taxes?” with “No, young fellow, I like paying taxes, with them I buy civilization.” [As quoted by Felix Frankfurter, another flaming liberal of the 20th Century.]

The fiscal policy of the U.S. must be tax and spend, tax and spend. That is what brought us the Interstate Highway System and put men on the Moon, while at the same time funding the development and deployment of thousands of nuclear warheads - thermo and otherwise - to the extent that, in 1955, uranium separation accounted for 5% of all U.S. electrical demand and a full 50% of its stainless steel production. (Not saying that the arms race was a good thing, just that it was very expensive; citations available upon request.)

And for what it's worth, the first thing Nixon did in a vein attempt to bring the budget under control was to more or less gut NASA: the war went on for another four years. And look at us now, post Reagan and W, a nation of moral pigmies.

Mike