Whenever you hear someone use "but other countries do it" as the rationalization for why the US should do anything, that is a red flag. What will follow is a false argument based on emotion rather than logic, numbers that are virtually meaningless, and policy desires focused on intentions rather than outcomes.
The most obvious example is health care. Set aside the Supreme Court's decisions to a key argument surrounding support for govt running the health care delivery system: "other democratic nations do it and they spend much less than America does." On its face, that claims is absolutely true; the US spends far more on a per-capita basis on health care than does any other country. What is left out of the argument is a key reason behind that fact - all of those other countries say NO to spending that the US routinely approves.
I can use my own parents as examples. My father died from leukemia at age 83. One of his last medical statements included a $12,000 bill, and insurance payment, for chemotherapy. In his native Europe, that would have been 12K saved because a govt-run system would not spend that sort of money on a person of his age. And there is my mother, whose coverage repeatedly paid for $500 prescriptions refills for a drug that, as best I can tell, did nothing to either extend her life or improve its quality. Again, in her native land, this expense would have been a no-go.
That is an unpleasant truth too many Americans refuse to acknowledge. Those dastardly death panels that Sarah Palin mentioned, the ones that liberals used as a cudgel with which to beat her, exist. No, they are not actually called death panels but they are the functional equivalent. When a bureaucracy decides that it will NOT pay for a particular course of treatment, the outcome is no different. And Obamacare includes a panel that will be making such decisions.
Whether these panels are good or not is immaterial; the point is that they exist in all the other democracies that advocates of govt-run health care point to as the example we follow. As it is, no one disputes that health care dollars are disproportionately spent in the last few years of an individual's life. In actuarial terms, this makes no sense. The taxpayer is forced to spend hundreds, if not thousands and tens of thousands, so that grandpa can have an additional three weeks, often three weeks that are going to be miserable. That spending comes at the expense of people who are much younger and whose potential for quality life is much greater. Fair? Maybe, maybe not, but few things in life are.
The argument that the US should do something because someone else does - without explaining all of what someone else does - is sure as hell unfair. But, it strikes at emotion, a powerful weapon. Few things are easier than using emotion as the basis for spending someone else's money; it gets a bit harder when folks eventually realize that "someone else" is them. In her lucid moments, my mother repeatedly asked for a pill, but it was one that would have ended her life, not added several months of dubious quality where she was unable to do something as simple as brush her own teeth. Keep that in mind next time someone suggests that you should participate in something "because everyone else is doing it." Ironic, isn't it? We tell our kids to NOT do things based on that logic; why is it okay to use public funds to do the opposite?
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