The FBI estimates that fraud, private and public, accounts for 10% of US healthcare expenditure. $350 billion out of the total of $3.54 trillion is pocketed by crooks. Why is this an Epicurean concern? Because that £350 million has to be made up for somehow, and is taken from honest citizens by insurance companies in the form of premiums and co-pay.

Some of the American companies who have been found out and have had to pay big fines – UnitedHealth, McKesson, Cegene and the Corporation of America are now involved in the privatisation of the British Health service, driven by a a government which has learned nothing since the days of Mrs.Thatcher, that is, that privatisation does little or nothing to bring down costs or improve efficiency. What it does do is to improve the profits of the companies, and the salaries of the CEOs. Fraud in the NHS, previously very small, is growing because it is easier to cheat than to cure patients. Aside from this, capitalism and healthcare do not mix because the consumer has difficulty making rational decisions based on quality and cost.

If you are sick and cannot get healthcare then your level both of pleasure and ataraxia must indeed be low. Actually, the American system, which is just another money machine, with its poor life expectancy, is a scandal, not to be repeated elsewhere. The UK system accounts for 8% of GNP; the America 16%. If the British doubled their expenditure of health the results would put America to shame. But this doesn’t stop some Americans constantly knocking the British system, using misleading information designed to protect American healthcare from the specter of the more rational single payer system.

Meanwhile, Americans spend $10,000 per annum per person on health, compared with $4000 person in the UK. And that is without taking into account the 27 million people who are uninsured.