Health care hell

Molly Ivins tackles the absurdities of the American health care system in her latest column.

...we've got 41.2 million Americans with no health insurance -- 14.6 percent of us -- which ends up costing us more than it would to pay for their insurance. We pay the world's highest health-care taxes. Our government spends $2,604 per capita, the highest of any nation, including those with national health insurance, even though only a quarter of our population is covered by government insurance.

We spend 13 percent of our GDP on health care, the highest in the world. The average in the European Union and in other developed countries is 8 percent. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, we spend a total of $4,600 per capita for health care, more than twice the average of other countries. We ain't getting much bang for our buck, either. Forget the "we have the finest health care in the world" claims. In both life expectancy and infant mortality, we're below the median for developed countries.