[RedStateRocker]

The only real options are entirely free market or single payer; nothing else works.

Every compromise we’ve had since WW2 has just given us the worst aspects of both cold hearted ‘let the folks die who can’t afford care’ free market model AND the meddlesome socialistic model. With few of the benefits of either

[arthurus]

Single Payer does not work, not for the middle class, not for the poor, not for the working class. It only works for the politicians and the very wealthy who can make their own market deals or for whom the government keeps a separate system, like for congressmen and high level bureaucrats. It depresses the economy and contributes to poorer health overall as the medical talent goes into other fields. In a market system the best and the brightest go into either the hard sciences or into Medicine. In a government system the mediocre and the rent seekers go into Medicine. Sure, everybody gets to see a doctor but it won't be a doctor like we have been used to, it will be a much lesser trained medic because educational standards have to be lowered. It will also be a clinic setting with several days necessary to get in for an emergency. In the English model and now in Canada the rulers of the system artificially stretch out wait times for necessary surgery so that a large portion of the aspiring patients will die. Treatment is refused to people past a certain age, especially if they are drawing government pensions and not working. I suppose that is a system that works for the government, anyway. It ties up people, reduces the middle class, decreases mobility, and vastly increases popular dependence on government.