Socialized Health Care in the USA

[kandrathe]

I don't get it. Single-payer is cheaper, it's been shown to work, it seems to produce better outcomes by almost any metric. If you find your reasons why the US must be exceptional here valid, I don't think I have the ability to talk you out of it. Best of luck with reform, I can only hope it passes with something vaguely resembling a public option still attached.

I'm not convinced it's actually cheaper, and I fail to see how the system would have incentives to improve or be innovative. Who pays for new and maintaining infrastructure? In a capitalist endeavor, the corporation invests in new infrastructure when it makes fiscal sense and then repays that cost over time. While government tends to build whatever they want, where ever they want, when ever they want without regard to any cost/benefit analysis what so ever. When has OUR government ever done anything in a more efficient way than the private sector? Just because you believe it sort of works in some OECD nations (contrary to much of my own research), doesn't mean that any flavor of single payer universal health care must taste equally sweet. And... So far, every "good" point I've raised you dodged or ignored. Such as, Mr. Krugman's own admission that Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, and Barrack Obama's plan were all basically equivalent, and he called them "Democare". And, he went on to say that it would ultimately usher in a single payer universal health care system by driving private insurance out of business.

Cheaper? Well, in one respect yes, in that I won't have to open up my wallet to buy the service since the government is giving it away for "free". So there is your choice. You can pay high taxes and buy private insurance out of your own pocket, or you can pay high taxes and use the government option since you can no longer afford private insurance.

I object to the government using the force of law to reach into every workers pocket to pay for health care whether the worker uses it or not, and they have little to say about it other than to vote in different people.

<blockquote></blockquote>