A Comparison

I'll just steal this from Mark Kleiman:

According to the FBI, in 2006 there were 17,000 murders and non-negligent manslaughters in the United States. According to the Institute of Medicine, "Lack of health insurance causes roughly 18,000 unnecessary deaths every year."

We shouldn't, in my view, be complacent about either of those statistics. Not only do most other rich nations not face our kind of levels of lack of health insurance, they don't have our levels of violent crime either.

Photo by Flickr user ernstl used under a Creative Commons license

Comments

And what scares the rich people who run this country -- crime, or being w/o health care?

Posted by John McCain: More of the Same | April 13, 2008 3:38 PM

And what scares the rich people who run this country -- crime, or being w/o health care?

Being forced to pay their fair share of taxes.

Posted by me2i81 | April 13, 2008 3:58 PM

There is no 'fair share' of taxes. Taxes are theft, enforced by a gun.

People who want government services should pay insurance premiums to cover when they need them.

Other services can be by charity, which is voluntary.

Or perhaps those who like 'fair' taxes would prefer 95% of their income taken in 'fairness', as used to be the case in the USA?

Posted by fred | April 13, 2008 4:35 PM

me2i81: great answer. The wealthy fear nothing more than paying a little extra in taxes. They have convinced too many people that govt is all bad and taxes are all bad, except, of course, when they are getting bailed out by the govt, like in the case of Bear Sterns.

As for fred, I guess then you favor elimination of the military and police forces, for those are paid for by taxes. It's not just govt social programs.

And it's not either all or nothing...we can have fair taxes without them being too high. Yours is a straw man argument.

Posted by cm | April 13, 2008 4:48 PM

Oh yeah, because 50% of your income going to the government in combined state and local income taxes, property taxes and social security taxes is not a "fair share".

Posted by Brad | April 13, 2008 4:57 PM

"People who want government services should pay insurance premiums to cover when they need them."

We can't all do that Fred. If I could just pay insurance premiums and get coverage, I would. Obviously, the insurance companies are more than happy to have me pay premiums. The problem is the "coverage" part. By denying coverage for pre-existing conditions, insurance companies can avoid paying for nearly all of my medical care. So why would I buy insurance?

Posted by fostert | April 13, 2008 5:00 PM

I am assuming Fred wants everyone to pay a voluntary "military premium" to entitle them to be protected by the US miltary.

Otherwise we'd be talking about theft!

Posted by Blorp | April 13, 2008 5:21 PM

Anciently, we've had different words for "theft" and "taxation" so the one is the other by analogy. It's as easy to say that "taxation" is a kind of meringue.

Reductionism: don't leave home without it.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | April 13, 2008 5:47 PM

Recent Krugman article cited study by Urban Institute
that there are 27,000 preventable deaths each year.
Whether 18,000 or 27,000 multiply either by five or ten years and you have slaughter and non-negligent mass murder through greed. And recent data showing blacks are not treated as aggressively as whites and so died earlier than whites.

What about the 35,000 deaths per year from guns
and that death rate among our children is sixteen
times higher than any other rich country? Slaughter
of the innocents.

Line up say 20,000 and kill them simultaneously in a
stadium the lurid imagery of slaughter is incontrovertible but kill individuals one by one and it is moral void of indifference. The sociopathic nihilism that is our core--a country that has reached a sociopathic critical mass. There will be blood but not a drop from the very white top ten percent. Only Russia and Mexico have greater inequality.

Posted by Mellors | April 13, 2008 6:16 PM

Two cents on this:

1) These statistics would not be nearly so depressing if our nation didn't ALSO spend more as a percentage of GDP on the health care/insurance industry and on prisons/criminal justice than many comparable nations. It's bad to get such bad results. It's even worse to get such bad results at such expense. Perhaps it's because our policies benefit certain entrenched elites?

2) Taxes are theft is only inches away from property is theft, and it makes about as much sense. For some reason, we should all accept a legal/political system that restricts our freedoms and taxes us just enough to provide all the social benefits that upper-middle class and upper class people love (contract enforcement, property law enforcement, basic family law, military, domestic police, highways, etc.) but we absolutely must stop any taxes & restrictions on freedom oriented to benefit the middle and working class. As for fairness -- most very wealthy people make most of their income from investment returns, not wages, and we tax those at a much lower rate. Finally, even though Rush Limbaugh says it's so, it's not actually true that most people spend 50% of their income on taxes. Certainly, most very wealthy people spend substantially less (of course, they also pay less than most upper-middle class people).

Posted by 2 Cents | April 13, 2008 6:33 PM

"Taxes are theft is only inches away from property is theft, and it makes about as much sense."

That's a bizarre statement. OTOH, one can quote Proudhon who said "Property is theft" (not a direct quote, what he actually said was "Property is robbery".) What he meant was that property used as tyranny was theft; property used in the pursuit of liberty was not. He advocated personal property but not "social property", i.e. land ownership of the sort done by the feudal system.

In other words, the notion that riding around as much land as you could in a day was a valid claim to "ownership" was nothing less than robbery. What you (or in voluntary association with others, presumably) personally control is what you should be allowed to own. This is a notion of "land use rights" vs "land ownership rights". It actually has been applied in, for example, jungle farming where farmers own specific plants, not the land the plants are on.

A government tax is extortion, nothing less. You are coerced to pay under the guise of a "social contract", which as the American anarchists pointed out, nobody has actually signed and nobody is allowed to opt out of, which makes the notion that such a thing is a "contract" absurd.

As Proudhon also said: "To be GOVERNED is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so. To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harrassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed, and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonored. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality."

P. J. Proudhon, General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century"

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | April 13, 2008 7:46 PM

Maybe if we had a proper safety net -- universal health insurance (inc. mental health care), unions, worker protections, paid leave, free quality higher ed., quality mass transit, etc. -- we wouldn't have so many murders.

Posted by DukeJ | April 13, 2008 7:53 PM

A government tax is extortion, nothing less. You are coerced to pay under the guise of a "social contract", which as the American anarchists pointed out, nobody has actually signed and nobody is allowed to opt out of, which makes the notion that such a thing is a "contract" absurd.

That this comes out of the mouth of so many politically aware Americans on a regular basis really does explain a lot of the contempt non-Americans feel for American political discourse. Even clear thinking people are polluted by it.

Posted by nolaboyd | April 13, 2008 8:11 PM

"Or perhaps those who like 'fair' taxes would prefer 95% of their income taken in 'fairness', as used to be the case in the USA?"

Actually, 95% of income was never taken in taxes in the entire history of the USA. During the 1950's the highest marginal tax rate was ca. 85%, but (a) that doesn't mean anybody paid anything close to 85% of their income in taxes and (b) this was one of the most properous times in American history.

Smarter trolls, please.

Posted by Joel | April 13, 2008 9:38 PM

I am sad that petey is too busy to get on this thread to call matt a murderer for not supporting universal health care and calling clinton supporters racist.

Posted by pittanylion | April 13, 2008 10:22 PM

I am sad that petey is too busy to get on this thread to call matt a murderer for not supporting universal health care and calling clinton supporters racist.

Posted by pittanylion | April 13, 2008 10:29 PM

Joel,

1) 85% is way too high. The "taxation is theft" school of thought is a little absurd at our current level of taxes, but at 85%, it would be simple truth. (Yes, I know it's a marginal tax rate. It's stil too damn high)

2) The good economic times of the 50s came as a direct result of the 40s, when we (with a little help) reduced Europe, Japan, China and Eastern Russia to bedrock. There was no other industialized country to compete with us, so we could have put Elmer Fudd in charge of the economy and done prety well for ourselves. "We did it in the 50s" is a poor defense of an economic policy.

Posted by heedless | April 13, 2008 11:02 PM

The "18,000 deaths by insurance" stat shouldn't be invoked like this. The original study was only powered to show that the uninsured have a 9% higher medical mortality rate than people with private insurance. This is not the same thing as killing or neglecting 18,000 people. The same statistics, btw, show that people in the 1990's w/o insurance had LOWER mortality than those on Medicaid.

Posted by John | April 14, 2008 1:26 AM

Fred - There is no 'fair share' of taxes. Taxes are theft, enforced by a gun.

Libertarian drivel.

Man is a social animal, and before the State came into existence and Hobbes "social contract" and other theories of state were explored, man lived in tribes for security and norms involving maintaining harmony through rules all must follow, sharing of resources, and that which the tribe agreed would be reserved to the individual. But the sharing of resources that were to be shared was not a voluntary act of charity, done purely out of the goodness of the heart of the lucky hunter who was otherwise free to eat the whole deer if he chose to and share nothing...Sharing was a norm, expected of most bounty, because even then they understood that the infrastructure of the tribe allowed more things to be had, and provided the security that outsiders or rogue insiders would not take it by force....

There IS a fair share of taxes. There SHOULD be a societal return to the expectation that not only shall the rich or the lucky/skilled hunter share and share well, also but that no one who is a non-contributor should be allowed to continue to parasitize that way except the allowance all human societies have given the aged and infirm.

****************
2 Cents - good post.
*****************

Mellors - What about the 35,000 deaths per year from guns
and that death rate among our children is sixteen
times higher than any other rich country? Slaughter
of the innocents.

Misuse of stats to push a political agenda. Flat out lies like kiddie deaths are 16 times that of any other rich country. Inflating the death rate from gun misuse to include suicide, vs. the "rope misuse" of higher suicide rate Japanese...Omitting the anti-gun groups idea of "children" is mainly black thugs aged 16-21 (even up to 25 years old in some dishonest advocacy "studies") - blasting away at other gang bangers. Slaughter of the innocents? Yes, in a minority of such deaths.
(Stranger-on-stranger murders by gun-owning whites and Asians in America is close to that of gun-owning allowed nations in Europe like Sweden and Germany. Domestic gun acts are higher, but not remarkably so, and in other cultures, about the same domestic violence death rate is achieved substituting knives, clubs, arson, fists&feet for guns.. What drives American stats is the astronomically high gun murder rate by blacks, 7 times that of whites, which itself comes 95% from a fairly predictable, identifiable subpopulation of blacks that number less than 1/3rd of all US blacks.)

*******************
Add in on top of the 18,000 dead from lack of health insurance the 95,000 that die from "medical misadventures" each year - far higher than in most countries. And, to be fair, subtract the 13,000 to 15,000 that would have died in America if we had British Health care from the long waiting lines and lack of adequate care - especially for cardiovascular, kidney dialysis, cancer, and trauma patients.

We could use a universal system but better the French or German one, than the UK or Canadian systems. Or even the Romney solution that keeps most private enterprise incentives and flexibility between states - while requiring everyone is insured and has seen insurance rates charged to businesses and individuals substantially lowered as "free riders" are eliminated. And in a global economy, we have to get our health care costs out of the price of our export goods as other countries have done and capture the same advantage other nations have slapping VAT on imports and discounting if off exports - an advantage we stupidly accepted that puts us at further disadvantage.

Posted by Chris Ford | April 14, 2008 1:41 AM

Chris Ford,

Interesting post, especially the last part about the VAT. It does seem to be the most economically efficient wasy to raise revenue (well short of Uncle Sam just printing more dollars).

I know why conservatives hate it (why do anything that makes the government look efficient), but I've never understood why liberals don't push for a VAT to replace the FICA and/or corporate taxes

Posted by beowulf | April 14, 2008 5:22 AM

The good economic times of the 50s came as a direct result of the 40s, when we (with a little help) reduced Europe, Japan, China and Eastern Russia to bedrock. There was no other industialized country to compete with us, so we could have put Elmer Fudd in charge of the economy and done prety well for ourselves.

The idea that the impoverishment of the rest of the world will automatically cause the enrichment of the US is so completely wrong that it causes me to wonder whether the author is actually conscious, or whether it has simply just failed a Turing test.

Posted by ajay | April 14, 2008 5:45 AM

Please tell me that Fred's post is parody - he wants to substitute the state with the insurance industry?

Posted by novakant | April 14, 2008 6:25 AM

"I know why conservatives hate it (why do anything that makes the government look efficient), but I've never understood why liberals don't push for a VAT to replace the FICA and/or corporate taxes"

I donno... I hate it because it's a "stealth" tax, not blazingly obvious to the end consumer. How can democracy work if the government is hiding the cost of providing public services from the voters? You can't do cost/benefit calculations, even unconsciously, if you only see the benefit.

And, yes, I object to withholding, too, for the same reason.

Of course, I kind of suspect that's why liberals like the VAT, too: It makes the public willing to pay taxes sufficient to support the sort of state liberals want, which they wouldn't be if they were aware at a gut level just how much of their income was being consumed by government.

Anyway, I just want to raise a different point which will be promptly ignored: International comparisons of health outcomes are a tricky business, because health outcomes in modern societies are mostly driven by personal behavior. Diet, exercise, vices, things like that. Once you've reached a moderate level of health care that ever developed nation manages to provide to pretty much everybody, it's mostly in the personal choices, aka "culture".

I don't think switching to a single provider government health care system is going to cause people to exercise regularly, drink red wine with most meals, adopt a diet high in fibers and complex carbohydrates, irrigate their sinuses daily with a Neti pot, and so on, and so forth. Or if it is, it's going to involve some pretty intrusive regulations you're being very quite about.

Posted by Brett Bellmore | April 14, 2008 7:19 AM

To: Chris Ford
From: Mellors

Would sorely like to catch up with you on your stats re
guns and health care. Sincerely. So any chance you can
give me your sources esp on h.c. so can have same knowledge level as you?

Off to pull hair and churn stomach pound heart on
why after paying $17,000 in health insurance premiums
am not being covered out of three different agencies that take a cut and tell me to call the other guy.

thanks

Posted by Mellors | April 14, 2008 11:06 AM