Another reason entitlements need to go bye-bye

[Hoggen]

Originally Posted by Barkingturtle [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

It is a business plan, and a fucking sound one that every nation in the world with a more desirable credit rating follows. It's also too late to implement in America, in my opinion. We've been inextricably infiltrated by corporate interests and they can actually convince us at this point that institutions are too large to die. Frankly we've let the plutocracy pull the rug out from under us. America is and will be little more than a rock tumbler which turns newborn potential into aged, terrified complacence.

Japan: universal health care for decades. Same credit rating as US. More than four times the US debt to GDP ratio
Greece: Universal health care. Credit rating of CC. Nearly 3 times the debt to GDP ratio of the US.
Italy: universal health care. Credit rating same as the US. Double the US debt to GDP ratio.

I could continue to list countries with the same or worse credit rating to the US all day that have state run or universal health care systems. Many of the AAA countries remaining are on the verge of losing it i.e. the UK, France, Austria, and Finland. While their credit ratings can hardly be tied exclusively to their health care systems, I think your suggestion that somehow the US is in trouble because it doesn't have universal health care flies in the face of fact. The US is in trouble because it spends too much. Less than a quarter of US spending is on Medicare/Medicaid. While that's way too much, it's still only a portion of the problem that is endemic to the political system as it stands. If Cut Cap and Balance had passed to law, there would have been no credit downgrade. Any number of other plans could have been formulated that would have averted a downgrade. The government chose to pass something irrelevant instead.