Fed Ex will get it there much faster. Fed Ex comes to my office building when called to get packages. Fed Ex walks in and drops packages onto my desk instead of the mailroom.

Measured one way, why pay extra, measured another, I am getting value for the extra money.

Take hip operations. In socialized systems, they tend to be done after long delays or not at all, saving a lot of money. Does it matter? Not if you are only measuring life expectancy as the outcome. It matters a great deal to the people who spend those years with mobility and able to enjoy life without pain.

Much of the value of private medicine in the US is not measured in those metrics. The freedom to choose your doctor or hospital has value. The freedom to choose an HMO, PPO, indemnity, or even to live on the edge without insurance has value. Being able to avoid the fear and worry of long delays before biopsies has value. The unorganized collection of systems with the freedom it provides instead of one “sensible” system for all itself yields value in competetion, contrasts, diversity, and choice.

Even the much maligned malpractice system (part of what we are paying for) has value–the access to a jury, to a possibility of substantial compensation.

That is a caricature of a strawman. I think the argument is more along the lines of, “We spend almost twice as much on health care as these European socialist systems, but what do we have to show for it? Not only does a large fraction of our citizens lack access to basic preventative care, we don’t even live longer than these socialist European nations.”

If the difference is only a few weeks and we pay twice the cost, then what exactly is so great about our system? Where exactly does the proof for the inherent supremacy of the ultra free-market ideology come from? The post office may be slow, but its cheaper than FedEx, and if it ends up that they both actually produce the same results, I’d rather save my money.