Okay, so you have one area (elimination of insurance company involvement) where cost would be saved in a government run system. Is that the only one you have? If so, after considering the brand new cost of more government employees to run the new system, do you still see a large enough difference in those two amounts to solve all the problems of medical costs in the U.S.?
Do you think that private insurance companies do not spend any money on administrative costs? Also, the government will not be pulling money out as profit, so there is a cost saver right there. After there is a single payer system the next step would be in decreasing cost at hospitals. This is more easily done if everyone can collectively bargain as a single population instead of piecemeal like it is now. We should also look at government run hospitals like the VA system.
But the U.S. has higher rates of obesity than people in other western nations that do have government health care. Should addressing this problem be part of government health care? Should the government pass ‘sugar control’ laws? I don’t think so and suspect you might not either, but I think government health czars would be much more likely to impose sugar control, than would insurance company lobbyists.
Nothing is stopping these type of regulations right now, and there is no one stopping advocacy of healthier diets. I really don't see what this has to do with anything.
You said student loans, not tuition and cost of living. I was merely making the point that amounts of student loans have a lot to do with ‘wants’, rather than needs.
Student loans have to do with tuition outpacing the cost of living to the point that middle class families can no longer "pay as they go".
It IS strange, because you don’t seem to like traditional America. James Madison once said; "I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents." That’s the spirit of U.S. government that Tea Partier’s would like to see restored.
I want to fix modern America, not the America from the 1700's. If you want to live in the America from 1700 I would suggest building a time machine.
I’m saying that just because life is more complicated than it was in the horse and buggy days, doesn’t mean that government has to grow to unaffordable levels to oversee the new complications.
I am not saying it should either. Other countries spend around the same amount as we do per capita, and yet they are able to provide health care for everyone while we only do it for the poor and old. Obviously, we are spending too much in other areas, namely the defense budget.
With a few rare exceptions, we got along fine without the EPA until 1970. I admit that the time for it had probably come by then. But like any government agency, it got too big and intrusive.
So we shouldn't even try? Sorry, but a defeatist attitude is a poor excuse.
Countries with government run health care don’t have as many high tech medical devices like CAT scans or MRI’s as the U.S. does. The U.S. has one of the highest cancer survival rates in the world. Do you think these characteristics of U.S. medicine will stay the same, or get better, when the government takes it all over?
The US has a lower lifetime expectancy, higher infant mortality rates, and overall poorer healthcare than countries with government run health care. All the while, we are spending twice the money for inferior healthcare.
What little public transportation that we do have, (compared to all of it) it’s still not single payer.
It is very similar to healthcare in other countries. Taxes are used to fund the bulk of the cost while users are expected to fund a small percentage of the total cost. To use my own city as an example, a day pass on the bus is 2 bucks. If all tax funding were pulled from the system that same pass would need to be 9 to 10 dollars.
Nothing socialist about public roads. Public posting of roads is in the U.S. Constitution.
We use tax money to build and maintain public roads that are open for everyone to use. Why can't we do the same for healthcare?
Most effective for what? Curing disease and keeping people out of pain, or running them through the system, keeping everything moving, pacifying doctors and assistants who may not be happy with the allowance the government gives them? Do doctors of different skill levels all make the same money?
Curing disease. If a more expensive procedure saves more lives then the more expensive procedure is recommended.
It’s usually the people themselves through the free market of the insurance company they choose to deal with, or their families that decide in the current U.S. system. It’s true that the system may run more smoothly if a bureaucrat in Washington makes some decisions however. A stranger’s death is much easier to take, isn’t it?
How many middle class families could provide for a child with a chronic condition without insurance, or afford a $250,000 doctor bill if the breadwinner has a heart attack or gets cancer?
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