Reply #203: That may be [View All]

My first point was a little more of a light hearted jab. I thought it was funny that in the same post that you say you aren't right wing, you use a right wing source.

As to your second point: In every major category used to measure health care, the US is last or very near last among industrialized nations. We spend more money per capita on health care than almost any nation, and for the average American, there are fewer options and more restrictions on what doctors they can see, than for people in countries with socialized medicine. And, we don't even cover everyone in the country. The facts are that the majority of countries with socialized medicine provide better health care, and more choices than the American system. All medical systems ration care. If you don't think an HMO is in the business of rationing care, then you aren't paying attention.

Your bit about charities taking care of certain operations is precisely the problem. For a huge number of Americans, medical care is so expensive and so difficult to obtain, that they wait until it is an absolute emergency before they attain it. That increases the health care costs for everyone. Every uninsured person in this country means you pay more in your insurance, because the uninsured don't get proper health care on a regular basis, so when they inevitably interact with the health care system, they cost much more than they would have otherwise. We all pay for that.

None of this mentions the fact that we waste anywhere from 20-30% of our health care dollars on profits for, and the overlapping bureaucracies of, insurance companies.

There are millions of Americans who are just one broken leg away from bankruptcy, unlike any of the other socialized countries. And, our health care system puts our country at a competitive disadvantage. The head of GM recently said that more health care goes into their cars than steel. It is so expensive for companies to provide benefits that American workers are at a disadvantage with other industrialized nations. You say socialized medicine would drag us down? We're already below everyone else in the industrialized world when it comes to health care.