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New KDnuggets Poll is asking:
Do you support universal, single-payer, health-care system for US?

Please vote on www.kdnuggets.com

Currently, US spends about twice as much per person as most other industrialized countries (which have universal health care), with US costs growing much faster than others.

Data from Commonwealth fund report , Gerard F. Anderson, Ph.D., and Patricia Markovich, Johns Hopkins University, November 2008.

At the same time US is number 35 for life expectancy.

Here is another very convincing image from Life Expectancy Versus Health Care Cost Per Capita

While the current US political system makes it very unlikely that universal health care will be adopted in the US in the next few years, from data mining and analytical point of view the arguments for and advantages of a universal system are clear.

If health-care is run for profit, then insurance companies have the incentive to eliminate as many sick people from coverage and deny coverage for pre-existing conditions, pushing uncovered onto the public-supported of medicaid and emergency rooms.

Second point is that paying per procedure also creates incentives for overuse, and is completely unsustainable, so the only way to control costs is to pay doctors per person covered.

Since insurance works on minimizing risk (standard deviation), we get the lowest risk if everybody is covered.

Finally we have many convincing examples of a universal health care system working well in Europe. US for about half the rate the US pays.