Thomas Friedman Talks Dumb

March 20, 2011

That was his word, but since he brought it up, the term can be rightly applied to his reference to the “unsustainable deficit.” Of course people who are not dumb know that the story of exploding budget deficits is a story of exploding private sector health care costs. The United States already spends more than twice as much per person as the average for other wealthy countries, with little obvious benefit in outcomes.

This is why people who are neither dumb nor dishonest talk about the need to fix the country’s health care system, not the budget deficit. If the U.S. health care system were as efficient as the system in Canada, Germany, the Netherlands or more than 2 dozen other countries, there would be no long-term deficit problem.

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