Replies

No we should not nationalize health care.. How do propose on doing it?????

Doing it is the hard part, of course. And programs like this that help people buy private insurance with public money do nothing to solve the root problem, which is that America's health care system is ridiculously expensive both in tax dollars and private dollars at the same time.

Something people don't like talking about because it doesn't seem to make sense is that Canada spends fewer tax dollars per capita on health care than America does, and America spends a higher percentage of its GDP on health care than Canada does. Americans get saddled with paying more for health care in taxes and then have to rely on getting insurance through their employer anyway if they don't want to pay out of pocket for insurance or care. The reason is Canadian hospitals spend half as much on administration and Canadian doctors spend way less time on paperwork, not to mention that overhead and such are about twenty times higher for American HMOs because the Canadian system isn't looking to turn a profit. A one-plan national insurance system really is more efficient than the private sector. And despite anecdotes I've heard about how awful treatment is in Canada, my experiences with Canadian hospitals have been satisfactory, timely, and free (and one of those experiences involved a family member's CT scan and subsequent operation by a neurosurgeon the same day she walked into the emergency room).

It's not national health care we should be scared of, really. If we could wake up tommorow and magically have everything in place, taxes would drop and anyone who has to pay for insurance or who is uninsured would save a lot of money the next time they broke their leg. The trouble is getting there would gut an entire industry and would be bad for the economy.