Apparently not you. Yes, the US has the capacity to provide outstanding health care. The problem is that it is incapable of delivering it to a large portion of its population. As I stated previously, in the 1970s, working for a very small company, less than 15 employees, I had employer paid health insurance - fully paid by my employer. That health insurance plan - Blue Cross when it was a non-profit - far exceeds the health insurance I have today, health insurance that costs me a lot, and costs my employer a lot. I currently work for a large corporation, over 2000 employees. My health care situation is more the norm than the exception. So, yes, I absolutely consider health care has deteriorated between the 1970s and today.
The development in the 1970s of the technologies that you trumpet, is fair proof that the increased cost and lower availability has neither significantly increased the value of our health care, nor our ability to develop cutting edge technology. Of course today's technology is better; however, my estimation is that in the 1970s, the US stood in a better position relative to the rest of the world than it does today. The WHO ranks the US 37th in health care. So what is the extra cost buying us?
As to being obtuse, the thrust of the thread is about the extremely well-documented problems in the US health care system. Responding that there are some good aspects, is totally beside the point. The problem is the bad aspects. From a
review of the book on the page cited in the OP:
Bestselling investigative journalists Barlett and Steele (America: What Went Wrong?) deliver a devastating indictment, supported by excellent research, of a health-care system that they say is failing to provide first-rate services to its citizens, 44 million of whom are without insurance. According to these Pulitzer Prize–winning reporters, now with Time magazine, the U.S. compares poorly with other Westernized nations in delivering quality care and a healthy life expectancy, and preventing infant mortality. Per capita health-care spending continues to exceed the amount spent by many other countries, the authors say, because one out of every three U.S. dollars pays for administrative costs. The authors also present case histories of patients, some with life-threatening conditions, who were ignored by bureaucratic HMOs that put profit first. Barlett and Steele describe how health care first became driven by profits on Wall Street during the Reagan administration. Competing insurance plans, they say, led not to better choices for consumers, but to physicians who are prevented by insurers from prescribing needed treatments; a severe shortage of nurses; and unsafe hospitals where staff shortages and unsanitary conditions result from cost-cutting. The authors, who strongly advocate a single payer plan, successfully depict a health-care system in crisis.
As to the cost of US health care, it is out of line with costs in other countries (many of them ranked above the US in overall health care):
...
An additional insight from the graph, however, is that even after adjustment for differences in G.D.P. per capita, the United States in 2006 spent $1,895 more on health care than would have been predicted after such an adjustment. If G.D.P. per capita were the only factor driving the difference between United States health spending and that of other nations, the United States would be expected to have spent an average of only $4,819 per capita on health care rather than the $6,714 it actually spent.
Health-services researchers call the difference between these numbers, here $1,895, “excess spending.” That term, however, is not meant to convey “excessive spending,” but merely a difference driven by factors other than G.D.P. per capita. Prominent among these other factors are:
1. higher prices for the same health care goods and services than are paid in other countries for the same goods and services;
2. significantly higher administrative overhead costs than are incurred in other countries with simpler health-insurance systems;
3. more widespread use of high-cost, high-tech equipment and procedures than are used in other countries;
4. higher treatment costs triggered by our uniquely American tort laws, which in the context of medicine can lead to “defensive medicine” — that is, the application of tests and procedures mainly as a defense against possible malpractice litigation, rather than as a clinical imperative.
There are three other explanations that are widely — but erroneously — thought among non-experts to be cost drivers in the American health spending. To wit:
1. that the aging of our population drives health spending
2. that we get better quality from our health system than do other nations, and
3. that we get better health outcomes from our system
source Before calling other people obtuse, you might try to understand the topic under discussion.
As to remarks about "the Health Scare Lounge", they're merely childish, and contribute nothing to the discussion.