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Hey there, welcome to another episode of Strange Planet. Thanks as always for sticking me in your ear.

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And it's great to have you along.

On this edition, we're going to talk healthcare. Or should I say sick care?

Really the system that we have, despite spending something like $4 trillion a year on healthcare, cancer has tripled, diabetes, skyrocketing, heart disease, skyrocketing.

All simers is at epidemic levels. Autism, you know, the, you know, the sad details into that.

With Anthony Sumeroff is with us. He is a psychotherapist and economics journalist who previously authored the book Universal Basic Income 4 and against Anthony is a regular columnist at terrainscience.com.

The link is in the episode notes and he's in the process of writing an extensive critique of the pharmaceutical industry called Big Pharma.

None dare call it quackery. Anthony's ebook Seven Big Pharma Myths Debunked is available for free. And again, the link is in the episode notes seven, the number seven, the numeral seven pharma myths.com.

Anthony, welcome to Strange Planet. How are you?

I'm great. Thank you so much for having me, Richard. I've been enjoying your show. I've been putting you in my ear. So I'll accept the thanks for that.

Wonderful. Great to have you. $4 trillion a year on healthcare. That's, that's worldwide.

Oh, no, that's just the USA. That's just the USA. Lord knows what it is worldwide.

It's interesting because Singapore has a similar GDP to the USA and they live about six years longer and spend a quarter per head of what the USA does on healthcare.

So I'm not saying that Singapore have the perfect healthcare system, but if the USA was to adopt a system similar to Singapore's, which by the way was all conceived of by American economist trying to fix America's healthcare system.

But it wasn't adopted by America. It was adopted by Singapore. They might actually save two to three trillion a year, which I think is enough to make everyone happy.

You could balance the budget, which would make conservatives happy and you could pay for the, you could pay for unfunded liabilities for people's pensions, which should keep the liberals happy.

Right. High speed trains. You name it. You can have all those goodies and huge infrastructure. So and despite that, you say despite $4 trillion US every year on healthcare.

Life expectancy is going down since every year since 2014. So obviously money, the more money spent doesn't know predictor of outcomes.

So I mean, it's a question, but it's a question, but why is that the case? You would think more money, more expensive diagnostic machines, the best, better medicine.

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