What is wrong with a single-insurer style system, where people can still opt to use their own money to buy a private alternative (like private schools) if they want to, but everyone else at least has access to quality health care?

We don’t need to nationalize hospitals and doctors to make our system better.

If you could find me an insurance company that has put money into reducing costs at the hospitals it services or has developed a life saving medical device with its profits, your argument would be a bit more legit.

Israel, where much great innovation takes place, has you guessed it, national health care.

Also, I believe its either Switzerland or the Netherlands that has high quality rates, a 100% private market, but has strict mandated cost controls in place.

Telling companies that they have to insure people who did not bother to get insurance until they have a condition will not reduce costs. If you think that’s such a great business idea, you’re free to start an insurance company that insures these types of people: tell me how that works out for you.

Right here you exclude 90% of people that had insurance at one point and were dropped from their coverage and are unable to obtain it again at a reasonable price due to being priced out of the market, with no market for them to go to, thus preventing millions of people from ever being able to pay for a procedure without going bankrupt.

Americans are more productive than the French because of the culture, not because they are healthier population (which they are).

Want to talk about loss of productivity? What happens when a construction worker is injured on the job and then either dropped or priced out of his insurance, what does he do if the injury lingers and/or prevents him from working again? One less skilled worker .

To notion that everyone using a computer would solve stuff is nonsense.

Once again you miss the point that these people would still be PAYING to be on the insurance, a healthier population reduces medical expenses, and you buy the argument that they are only making 3.5% profit (how hard is that to do when you pay your executives millions of dollars to reduce earnings after expenses and salaries? Real Easy.

Medical malpractice is being looked at and it isnt a major expense in the average person’s doctor visit, it is a major expense for a doctor. The biggest costs in the medical system are inefficiencies, outdated systems, and increased drug/equipment costs. (plus others im surely not naming). How would you like it if you were injured by a doctor and couldnt recover, doubtful you’d like that. If you really think insurance prices are going up because Dr’s are paying a lot of medical malpractice, well you are willfully ignoring facts.

1) Larger pool of people (bargaining power w/ drugs, supplies, etc) = reduces costs
2) Electronic Health Care CMS’s = reduces costs
3) No advertising, partying, etc budgets = reduces costs
4) No CEO’s and top executives to rake in big bonus money = reduces costs
5) Proven that medicare operates at about 20-30% less expenses than a regular insurance company = reduces costs
6) National insurance exchange which if all rates are visible to everyone, you can actually see and pick whats best for you, and will be transparent and if someone raises rates up, you go elsewhere = reduces costs due to increased competition.

So, basically, yes, the stuff being implemented in the HCR bill currently will reduce costs and/or be able to take people on at a reduced rate.

You are still stuck in free republic land with most of the stuff you have laid out and many of your points have been negated by facts over the past year through discussion.

The next thing you will tell me is that there are millions of homeless people and for a modest tax per year, we could pay to put them into houses because everybody “deserves” that luxury. Yes, housing is a luxury, health care is a luxury, and extra income is a luxury. Unfortunately the only thing guaranteed to us is life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. First thing that people will say is that the health part is referring to Dr.’s, health care, etc. which is not true. It simply means that nobody can take your life unjustified. And we are all welcome to the pursuit of happiness but unfortunately, some people catch the s*&t end of the stick and don’t reach what they see as happiness. It sucks but that is life.

Also, lets look at the real reason Danny Williams came to the US… Our horrible, evil system that is corrupted by money does something that many of these other socialized systems cannot… It provides an incentive for new technology, new procedures, and new ways to take care of people which.. Yep! you guessed it! makes that company money! And as long as there isn’t a restriction placed on how much money you or a company can make, that incentive for innovation will always be there. Lets not take away the main catalyst that built the foundation of our country.

And where exactly did I “attack” your mom? I said I’m sure she’s a nice person but I don’t want to buy her shit. You want her to have something – YOU buy it for her.

Guess who’s workers are more productive – French or US? Guess which one has universal health care.

And you are sadly misinformed about health care companies and their huge “profits”. The Industry has a margin of about 3.5%. What are we going to reduce that to? 0%?

How much will that save? That’s right 3.5%! Will that let your mom buy health insurance?

The biggest cost in health care that can be eliminated is malpractice insurance. There should be an option where people can buy thing without the option to sue. Give up their right to sue for malpractice in exchange for substantially lower rates.

But tort reform isn’t even on the table with the current proposed “reform.”

Right now, US doctors pay more in malpractice insurance than they make practicing medicine in France. You want to reduce costs, then go after costs: that’s a cost.

Telling companies that they have to insure people who did not bother to get insurance until they have a condition will not reduce costs. If you think that’s such a great business idea, you’re free to start an insurance company that insures these types of people: tell me how that works out for you.

And where your most ill informed of all is in your delusional notion that government will reduce costs. Pick up a damn book on economics before spouting off your utopian ideas that have been tried 10000 times before but have never actually worked.

Do you not realize as an individual in the United States, its can easily cost 100% more annually to have insurance vs working for a company, especially if you have a preexisting condition?

Do you not realize that insurance companies raise their rates haphazardly and way above the actual cost of medical care on a regular basis?

If you purchased 1000 domains a year, and the price of them went up 10% a year for the last 5 years, you could adjust for that and assume, but what happens when they go up, say, 40% one year, or, if they said, you have too many domains, were raising you up 70% this year ‘because you have to have them anyways to survive’, you wouldn’t be ok with that.

Now imagine that it is more than your income and its essentially a price on living or dying?

You must also not realize that many people without insurance use a hospital as their primary care facility, costing 10x+ what it would had they gone to a doctor (if they had insurance), which the cost is then passed on to you via local/state taxes and increased costs when you go the next time.

You need to look deeper at the issues more past your direct wallet, because, you miss the forest for the trees when the rest of your money is disappearing due to the inefficiencies in the medical system.

Even Health Insurance companies realize they need reform in the longterm or prices will be too expensive for anyone, its just that, in the short term they want it dead because of profits now.

My mom was an example, and apparently, you are too dense to make it past an example and must attack the person instead of the actual circumstances which created the ability for a middle class health care worker to not be able to afford insurance or plan for the increased costs if they did have.

Please respond to the substance and not continue with responding to the situation in terms of my mother. If you are unable to, well, then its obvious you have no fucking clue what you are talking about and just want to bitch without knowing anything (and paying for some surgeries doesnt count for ‘knowing’)

But there is a more important question I want to ask you though. I’m assuming you buy health insurance. You also said above that you paid for surgeries for 5 people in your life. Let’s just pretend for a second that we go back in time to before you ever paid for anything healthcare related in your life, and America had adopted the exact system that France uses. This is a system that, as I said above, costs about half as much per person. Do you honestly believe that your out of pocket expenses to date would be more than what they are to date if we had been under France’s system all that time?