What this argument ignores is that we already spend more on health care than any other nation on earth. Nearly 11 percent of our GNP is spent on health services, making the health sector the third largest economic activity in the nation. In spite of these enormous expenditures, we still have many problems with our health system. Today one child dies of poverty, hunger, and malnutrition on average of every fifteen minutes. Three million families were refused medical care in 1986 because they could not pay for it.
Health costs are the major cause of personal bankruptcy.
These are not only minority problems, they are majority problems. Other countries offer more comprehensive and universal health care coverage and have better health indicators and more popular health services than ours, and cost much less than ours do. Great Britain, for example, with 5.6 percent of its GNP spent on health services, offers comprehensive and universal health coverage, with 85 percent of the British people pleased with their health services. A somewhat similar situation exists in Canada. A lot of profits and obscenely high salaries are being made from sick people.