We're Smarter Now

Nicholas Kristof of the NY Times has a little anecdotal evidence that Canadian-style health care in the US won't be such a bad thing. Money quote:

But the bottom line is that America’s health care system spends nearly twice as much per person as Canada’s (building the wealth of hospital tycoons like [former hospital company CEO] Mr. [Rick] Scott). Yet our infant mortality rate is 40 percent higher than Canada’s, and American mothers are 57 percent more likely to die in childbirth than Canadian ones.

Recently, my son Eli had to be taken to the emergency room because he'd stuck a pea up his nose and couldn't get it out. Not a big deal, but Eli wouldn't let the doctors or nurses touch him. So the doctor walked Lisa through getting it out by blowing hard into his mouth and dislodging the pea, and then she snatched the offending legume with a small tweezer (a mini-version of the way Ah-nold did it in Total Recall [about 1:12 in]). The bill was several hundred dollars, and they basically did nothing except process his intake.