Courtesy of Kieran Healy, the chart on the right shows relative spending on healthcare among a bunch of advanced capitalist economies. Basically it shows that the United States has (a) much less public involvement in healthcare than the other countries and (b) much higher healthcare costs.
My contribution to this debate is the big red arrow pointing to the United States, just in case you miss it way up there in the corner. Note that the chart doesn't really demonstrate any special trend, but it does show that conservatives who insist that national healthcare systems are nothing more than vast boondoggles that inevitably produce huge amounts of waste and higher costs just aren't looking at the evidence. As near as I can tell, France has a better healthcare system than the United States on practically every measure, and does it at half the cost.
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