>The system mentioned, Stirling, was the US health system.

-- oh, that's a mess, no dispute.

Although nobody's really doing much better; the Canadian and European systems are approaching bankruptcy and breakdown.

The basic problem is that all our health care systems were designed when there was a lot less they could do, particularly for the old and very sick, who are the ones who consume most of the resources.

Giving palative care to the dying was cheap. Keeping them alive another six months turns out to be very expensive; treating the illnesses that accompany another 20 years of being old and frail is very, very expensive.

Same-same with pensions. People used to die at about 65, which is why the US Social Security system kicked in at that age. Now that people are living another 10 or 20 years or even more, it screws things up royally.

It's not as bad as Europe, with its deathbead-demographics, but still pretty bad.

Ghu alone knows what the Chinese are going to do, since they have Germany's demographics with nothing like European standards of income.

>If you want to claim it was because of pollution of your precious bodily fluids by Hispanic immigrants, then let's see some figures.

-- temper, temper, temper. I was referring to late-19th and early-20th-century immigrants, Italians and Greeks and so forth. They're considerably shorter than Dutchmen, you know.

It's amusing to see Europeans scramble desperately to find _something_ they're doing better than the US.