Yes, for the simple reason that every other industrialized country in the world has much heavier involvement in health care than we do and their costs are lower and their longevity is higher. If they can do it, so can we.

In all fairness… I’d be upset if we got a system like Canada’s or the UK’s or Japan’s, but from the data above, I’d be happy to have Luxembourg’s, Norway’s or Switzerland’s system.

Yes, but so is our “socialized” health care system of Medicare. Medicare is also more expensive than other countries’ system. Most of the big costs in the US system are among the elderly anyway, which means Medicare. If you compare costs among people barely not eligible for Medicare to those who have just qualified, you don’t see a discontinuous jump at all. It’s a smooth curve. Medicare overspends exactly the same way our other (certainly government-influenced) system does.

Is there any reason to expect government involvement in the non-Medicare system to do anything other than make it like Medicare?