How other countries afford universal healthcare and enjoy a higher lifespan

Countries such as the UK, France and Cuba provide universal free healthcare for all. Worse, according to Moore:

In a study of older Americans and Brits, the Brits had less of almost every major disease. Even the poorest Brit can expect to live longer than the richest American.

"The US population in late middle age is less healthy than the equivalent British population for diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, myocardial infarction, stroke, lung disease, and cancer. Within each country, there exists a pronounced negative socioeconomic status (SES) gradient with self-reported disease so that health disparities are largest at the bottom of the education or income variants of the SES hierarchy. This conclusion is generally robust to control for a standard set of behavioral risk factors, including smoking, overweight, obesity, and alcohol drinking, which explain very little of these health differences… Level differences between countries are sufficiently large that individuals in the top of the education and income strata in the United States have comparable rates of diabetes and heart disease as those in the bottom of the income and education strata in England." (Banks, Marmot et al., "Disease and Disadvantage in the United States and in England," Journal of the American Medical Association, 2006).

For someone used to the American healthcare system, the question that immediately comes to mind is what sacrifices in the quality of healthcare are necessary to afford that. Yet the film shows doctors saying they never have to forego medically necessary procedures. Which begs the question, how can countries immensely poorer than the US afford that?

I posited four principal answers to that:

1. More progressive taxation systems. The very richest in other countries are not as rich as in the USA.
2. Less waste in overhead. By eliminating the need to put a system to second-guess doctors' decision about what is medically necessary and no need to figure out if a procedure is covered, millions and millions in medical overhead are eliminated.
3. Less waste in lawsuits and lawsuit prevention.
4. More waste in military expenditures.

Findings on the Impact of Factors

1. Taxation: The richest 1% of Americans earned 22% of US adjusted gross income in 2006. A 50% tax on the income of the top 1% of Americans would be enough to pay for 79% of the total healthcare cost of the US.

2. Administrative Overhead: A 2003 study in the New England Journal of Medicine by Woolhandler et al. showed that in 1999, health administration costs totaled $1,059 per capita in the US, compared with $307 in Canada. Admin costs accounted for 31.0% of US health expenditures versus 16.7% in Canada.

3. Legal Costs: OECD estimates suggested that direct and indirect legal costs amounted to 2.7% of America's GDP. Reducing the cost of tort to the levels of other industrialized countries would pay for about twice the cost of universal free healthcare.

4. Military Spending: Reducing military expenditures by 45% could pay for the cost of universal healthcare.

Conclusion

Reducing healthcare administrative overhead could reduce costs by about 15%, enough to cover the uninsured. Combining reductions in tort and military spending with a slight increase in tax rates for the wealthiest would allow the US to achieve universal healthcare while fostering unprecedented prosperity.