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While our health care system leaves quite a bit to be desired, I have also heard some horror stories about other countries systems as well. I do know this, as was previously mentioned, our free market health system is very entrenched. Not only that, but our we are an economy that is based upon a capitalist system where supply and demand is paramount.

Now, some will and can argue that there is no place in the medical business where a free market and capitalism should prevail over and above the care of a person in need. I will say that NO person in this country has ever been denied health care based on the ability to pay.

Too many people are earning a good living in the medical businss. From housekeepers, nurses, supply companies, food companies, etc. It aint just the doctors. How would they all be affected by a nationalized health care system.

How much would taxes go up? And, what next? Nationalised food costs? How about government automobile?

Not to mention, the President has very, very little that he/she can do to get this program through. They can suggest, lobby, and pray and preach, but the legislative branch is still the one that has to write and pass the law. President ain't king.... No matter what Bill thought.

Thanks Steve. I would hope votes are not wasted. As for some folks desire to emulate a socialistic government in the area of health care, I hope they remember that our forfathers left those same lands and established a Republic for a reason. We may have our falts but I always remember that our border guards are there to keep people out not keep us in. I wonder if the new immigrants know something that we may have forgot.
Ron

I think if a bunch of us put our heads together in a hunting camp anywhere we'd come up with solutions for imediments to the next day's hunting. Human nature, a reluctance to accept ideas from other places, is part of the problem of rich nations not finding better ways of doing things.

France, with extraordinary social infrastructure and equality, the best healthcare in Europe but serious problems of inclusion, struggles to find a way to pay for all the social amenities without ruining them along the way. Canada, prosperous with full employment and trade surpluses, struggles in the same way with child poverty.

How can wealthy Canada justify the inequality? Within the last 30 years, the United Kingdom has done a remarkable job of reducing child poverty with tax credits and social programs. The US, sleepwalking into economic darkness, has the same problems of building social mobility in a rich but unequal society.

If a bunch of liberal and conservative hunters, Protestants, Catholics and Muslims, can find practical solutions to their common problems of high winds and high waters, safe transportation etc, you'd think our leaders could find inspiration and common ground to make healthier and happier societies, eh?

I've not got the time to get too involved in this, dislike making sweeping statements but have to say that it is a futile exercise to try to compare transborder healthcare costs. Using percentage of GDP figures as a basis is not worthwhile, the figures are skewed by too many other factors. For example a huge infant mortality rate in Alabama has to be seen in the social context of the population, rather than the state government.
Jack M - you mentioned the WHO - sure, integrate insurance costs and taxes, but the REAL figures are buried in the indirect supports. R & D grants subsidize a lot, sweet deals on medication do the same. The pricing structures of medication from country to country are impossible to analize e.g. Ibuprofen is about $10 for a small pack here, whereas it could buy me a container of 250 in the US. If the drugs are generic it is even cheaper.

In Ireland we supposedly have a free / State healthcare system but everyone above the poverty line has the equivalent of Blue Cross / Shield to pay for better service & treatment. Right now, we have people sleeping on trollies (bogies in US lingo?) because we do not have sufficient hospital beds. We are recruiting nurses from the Philippines because we cannot get enough of our own to work for the salaries on offer. We have a MRSA crisis in our hospitals. Do not get ill if you visit here.

I pay a social welfare contribution (taxes) of about 15% of my income up to a ceiling, above which the rate of contribution drops. In France, the rate actually increases above a certain level of income. Employers pay a significantly higher contribution, especially in France, which explains the high rate of unemployment there.
I receive no dental benefits and basically no medical benefits because my income is above the threshold, yet in France I could get everything paid for by the State - from reading glasses to contact lens solution and even there they have the "complementaire" to provide top-up cover.
In Scandinavian countries the contributions by both employer/employee are much higher yet the population there continues to bitch about the high costs and the poor service.

What I can say is that the costs were highest in France when I lived there, I continued to pay them to France when I moved to the US (where I was classified as a French expat!) and they are lower in Ireland.
In many European countries the contributions also include an element for social welfare payments, for sick pay, early retirement, etc. The academics would have to guess at the breakdown of the figures and then base their comparisons on that - a bit like classifying a Cape Gun as a 20 bore because that is the average of the 3 barrells!

Larry B - all politicians talk the talk, they pander to anyone that will give them a vote, that is what got them there. On gun control I have no major issues with a limitation on number / type of weaponry e.g. assault rifles. Maybe that's because we had a civil war here less than 100 years ago and from 1970-to a couple of years ago more or less the same thing "up North."
Km

King, I think it's very unfortunate that many of our so-called leaders and wannabe leaders are in more for the power thay can obtain for themselves than for the good of the electorate. -- Ed

The WHO data are all we have to go by, and if not precise, they're close enough. The fact that the US pays more and gets less in health care than any OECD or EU country is undeniable.

Steve L., don't waste your breath on capitalism, free markets and competition, when the FDA protects Big Pharma profits by preventing Americans from buying Rx drugs at open world market prices! American citizens pay much more for the same Rx drugs that the rest of the world enjoys because of government intervention paid for by corporate lobbyists. The FDA has actually confiscated needed prescription drugs from senior citizens who bought those drugs in Canada (at much lower prices than the identical drugs sold in your local pharmacy).

Yes, you can find horror stories in any health care system, ours included (i.e., the girl who died after Cigna denied $$ for a liver transplant despite the unanimous pleas of her medical team). But ours is the only major country where people are confronted with ruinous medical bills, or are afraid to change jobs for fear of losing medical coverage. As long as insurers can profit more by denying coverage, our health care suffers.

Socialized medicine is like our socialized public schools or our socialized police protection - maybe not perfect, but a helluva lot better than nothing. And like schools and police protection, socialized medicine still allows those who can afford it to upgrade through private sources.

I would be willing to bet that nearly all people who support the current health care system in the U.S. fall into one of two catagories. 1. They are either employed or have ownership in some part of the health care system or have a close family member so involved. Or, 2. They are nicely insured by some employer or other source. (There may be a third catagory of flat out rich folks who are happy to be able to "buy" the "best health care there is" though they probably have very expensive insurance policies.)
The 40 million or more Americans with no health care and those saddled with the typical HMO which tells them what doctors they can see and when probably don't have the same perspective.
One interesting thing is that those who tout the present system love to complain about the "cost" to the "system" from those without insurance when those folks can't avoid seeking health care. However, the "cost" imposed by those folks on the system is not honestly recorded.
For example, two years ago I had two heart stints implanted. An afternoon proceedure in the heart cath lab and stayed overnight in the hospital. The amount "billed" for the procedure was $87,000. That is the amount which would be billed to an indigent or someone without insurance. The total "allowed" or agreed to by the doctors and hospital to be paid primarily by insurance was $11,000. The $87,000 figure is pure BS.
No one who has any kind of insurance or plan pays even a quarter of the charges imposed on those without insurance. But, the health care providers charge that highest amount to those who can least afford to pay and then write that amount off when they calculate their taxes. The providers also add up all those totally unrealistic charges when they claim in the public and press how much it costs them ("and all of us")to provide unavoidable services to the indigent.
And of course, in a system with universal health care, there are none of those nasty uninsured folks to inflate the "cost" of unpaid health care.
One other thing which has been mentioned here but I have not seen directly addressed. The defenders of the present U.S. system are always eager to share horror stories of health care deficiencies in other countries. You know, the 6 month wait for knee surgery and all. But, those stories are always anecdotal and not in any way a scientific appraisal of a system. And, if you compare even the anecdotal stories with the HMO stories easily enough found in this country, you get the same thing, maybe worse.
But again, out system is well entrenched and pays out way more than its share of mordida to the politicians. Don't expect any dramatic changes.
Jake

Jack, there's a whole lot of local control over our "socialized" schools--unless maybe they've done away with school boards up there in the People's Republic of Minnesota. Ditto the cops. The ones we encounter in Iowa--unless you're an illegal and happen to run afoul of ICE, or find one of the rare FBI's in our state--aren't feds. They work for the municipality, the county, or the state, and are thus far more accountable at a local level. We elect school boards, city councilmen, mayors, county sheriffs, etc. So to compare "socialized" schools and cops to government health care would only work if each city, county, and state had elected officials in charge of health care at those respective levels. I don't think any of the plans being suggested by any of the candidates work that way. Or at least I haven't heard that there's going to be something like a city or county medical board that would be the equivalent of a school board, or a county medical officer that would be in charge of health care the way the county sheriff is in charge of law enforcement.

RMC, while I respect your concerns about McCain, we need to remember what happened the last time conservatives got upset at a Republican candidate--as in GHW Bush, when he went back on his "no new taxes" pledge. The protest vote went to Ross Perot, which gave us 8 years of Bill Clinton. There are only two people that have a legitimate chance of winning the election, and they'll have either an R or a D behind their names. If enough R's sit it out or write in a candidate, that may be enough to get the D elected. Especially in the middle of the war on terror, I'm not at all thrilled about 4 or 8 years with either Hillary or Obama at the helm.

Larry - Quibbling about which level of government provides a basic, essential service misses the point: government already provides basic, essential services - and most of us expect those services as a right. In a developed nation, basic health care should be as much a right as basic education or basic security.

The comparison of socialized medicine to socialized schools and police is direct in most other developed countries. But even in the US it's not as far off as you suggest. Our "local independent" schools are bound up in state and federal financing, standards and unfunded mandates such as 'No Child Left Behind.' Ask any school board member.

And sometimes government can do a better job than the private sector. Administration by private insurance companies absorbs 19 to 24 per cent of the health care dollar; Medicare administration costs run closer to 2 per cent. But then, the faceless bureaucrats aren't pocketing seven-figure salaries.

Being an entrepreneur, I view the lack of universal health care as a disincentive for people considering making that leap, due to the high cost of self-employed health insurance. Why should our health depend on how much money we make? If it works for Europeans, why shouldn't it work for us? As for paying for it, the trillion we've blown in Iraq would have easily paid for it. It's a matter of priorities.

As for McCain, if his wanting to stay in Iraq indefinitely and bomb Iran is your idea of good judgment and a good use of our lives and treasure, then his views on the 2nd amendment will be the least of our worries.