You make a nice argument until you get to this sentence:

“…providing you have actually got insurance the company will find many ways to skimp the costs and in the end this could cost you…”

You’re wrong. When you sign up for an insurance policy, you buy the coverage you want. If you want a $500/yr deductible, then you sign up for that plan. If you want no deductible, you get that plan, etc…

Some people do sign up for the cheapest plan possible so they can have more money in their bank account. So if they have this accident, and their plan doesnt cover all of the costs of their accident, the hospital will still treat them and fix them up. They can then pay whatever the balance is with the money they saved from buying the cheapest plan. If they don’t have the money because they spent it, they can even pay the hospital off over time.

so once thats all done and dusted, providing you have actually got insurance the company will find many ways to skimp the costs and in the end this could cost you tens of thousands of dollars which the average person just simply can’t pull from their arse.. so is saving that 30 or more bucks a week well worth it?

You think you should receive software and movies for free but others should die if they can’t afford a doctor?

Sickos.

In the end, Canadians spend about 2% GDP more than Americans through government because that includes most of their healthcare. Americans spend about 20% GDP in healthcare, which is mostly done outside of taxes. The Canadians get to keep most of their money.

There is no such thing as a for-profit insurance provider that operates as efficiently as medicare. Private insurers simply cannot exploit economies of scale of a program as large as medicare. To believe the US government could not do the same would mean we cannot operate as efficiently as every other advanced economy. It would mean the US government cannot operate as efficiently as it does for medicare or medicaid, which already cover America’s old and poor.

I would imagine your taxes would have to increase, but there would clearly be a significant savings overall.

http://www.pnhp.org/news/IJHS_State_Paper.pdf
http://www.hms.harvard.edu/news/releases/0820woolhimmel.html

We already know the same thing happened in every other country. Canada was probably the most recent major country to switch from a US to a single-payer system and their healthcare costs dropped to a level half of the US (previously, they both were the same) and health increased.

Health increased for a different reason – the healthcare had become more evenly distributed and the lower classes saw significant rises.

Even the rich get the same childcare, healthcare, social insurance, unemployment benefits, etc in most developed countries.

The US system is a little different in that most benefit programs are targetted to just the poor. Most countries apply the benefits to everyone evenly… that may be why people are willing to pay higher taxes and receive more of their “income” through the government than the US.

Since both systems use the same doctors, the cost savings comes mostly from the efficiency of a single large-scale system. Yes, people who do all of the paperwork and calculate who to deny, or collect huge profits from private insurance would lose their jobs if the government became the insurer. If any of those people got different jobs, then their new output would increase the size of the economy because we’d have the same amount of healthcare + the new work being produced.

Ever heard the song…

Yankee Doodle went to town,
A-Riding on a pony;
He stuck a feather in his hat,
And called it macaroni.
Yankee Doodle, keep it up,
Yankee Doodle dandy;
Mind the music and the step,
And with the girls be handy!

… and wondered why he called it macaroni?

See… in the mid-18th-century in London there was a notorius club called The Macaroni Club. It consisted of young bashful men gathering to discuss the latest in fashion, culture and cuisine (basically a social gathering for flamboyantly g@y people).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macaroni_%28fashion%29

The word “yankee” in it’s turn… comes from the the old dutch word “yuck” which means a rude, hick, hillbilly, slow, simpleton etc.

So when the britts sang about the “yankee doodles” what they were singing was:

A f@ggot hick went to town,
A-Riding on a pony;
He stuck a feather in his hat,
And called it macaroni.
You f@ggot hick, keep it up,
F@ggot hick dandy;
Mind the music and the step,
And with the girls be handy!

And here’s the blissfulness of it…

The ones singing that song nowadays, and getting some “national pride” out of it, probably wouldn’t be caught dead with someone calling them g@y. It’s kind of in the social construct and mindset of the “lesser half”, wouldn’t you agree? (In all fairness, there is a “better half”, they just didn’t kill all the hicks after the war and unfortunately those Yankee Doodles spawned like a mofo… cause, that’s what they do?)

Anyways…

This is how we know that irony in it’s purest form stems from England. Who else would have an entire nation of hicks proudly sing about g@ypride and adapt it as a national symbol for their gigant Macaroni Club?

Yankee Doodle went to town… A-riding on a pony…

Catchy stuff. ^^

Americans pay more in the end, but they pay for most of it out of their own pocket rather than taxes.

Most people in OECD countries are richer than Americans. Per capita GDP is high in the US, but the inequality is so extreme the median US wage is only $24,000.

$24,000 is the minimum wage in most advanced countries and considered very poor outside the US. Most Europeans receive about half of their income from government benefits, so a European nation with low inequality will generally have twice as much as a median American family. In the US, the median income + government benefits is about $50K, compared to $100K+ in many Scandinavian nations.

health care is the right of every person rich or poor, and some people are poor not just out of laziness, what about those who have had a shocking divorse or have run a failed business? or better yet those who are poor because they have had to pay for kemo?
and when u add profit to the equation u are just going to get screwed… here in Australia the system has far too many problems but at least i know i wouldnt have to sell a house just so i can live?!

and just think of the trillions of dollars that has been wasted in iraq alone, and think how many lives could have been saved.

Canadian doctors are not civil servants. Providers are entirely private in Canada.

Canadian physicians don’t really earn less than most American doctors now that the dollar is in parity. More doctors are actually moving to Canada than the other way around now.

The cost savings between the US and Canada is almost entirely due to the efficiency of the single-payer system in Canada. Canada just has a lot less overhead waste without hundreds of insurers, claims research, marketing, or insurance profit.

It’s the US system that produces less doctors. Fewer doctors naturally drives up wages and the cost of healthcare.

He focused on the single-price UK system so any thinking person would realize how efficient it is compared to the complex web of insurers and generic / patent drugs in the US.

America has the lowest ratio of doctors in the developed world. The high pay is due to a for-profit system that makes education very expensive and out of reach to talented young adults. In Europe, medical school is essentially free so you have more doctors and they “only” make a couple hundred thousand dollars. That’s also why Canadian doctors receive subsidized education and then move to the US where doctors are rare and in so much debt they can demand higher wages.