Here's the thing... empirical evidence from around the world suggests that in the healthcare feild, government intervention reduces costs. I could point to France, Germany, the UK, Canada and many others ALL of whom have socialized insurance(with the UK having a true socialized medical system where the doctors are gov employees) and ALL of them pay HALF of what we pay per person, with 99% coverage... This is undeniable, irrefutable fact. It's not because Americans are fat, or any other reason (Americans being fat does account for a very small portion of our extra costs but it is not the reason our costs are double other advanced nations)...
Obamacare aims to bend the curve to reduce future costs: If everyone is in the insurance pool, than that dilutes the amount of old and/or sick in the system compared to healthy individuals thus lowering costs, for example.
I want to address "death panels" as well real quick because the phrase has been blown out of proportion. What they're referring to is only about what the GOVERNMENT should pay for... how do you think it would work out if the government was paying for everyone's cancer treatment? It would get expensive for the taxpayers, right? Well, since government already does not help with cancer treatment, and private funds are already needed and Obamacare leaves private medical practice in tact - one with cancer would still pay for their treatment as they do now(if they can afford it)... If they cannot afford it, then they presumably die, but they would have without Obamacare too... So Obamacare isn't killing granny either.
Just spoke to a Canadian lady the other day.....asked her what she thinks about her health care coverage, without me mentioning where I stand......I listened....and here is what she said.......
Paraphrasing.....she basically said that their preventative medicine is great....she can see a doctor anytime she needs to and it is not a problem. For any emergency surgery, like open heart surgery for example, there is not a wait time associated with these....they happen just as fast as in the U.S.
She said that the ONLY time they get wait times on surgery are when it is a prodedure like Knee surgery, which is not an emergency, and even those have reasonable wait times. She also said she is not working at the moment, so she picks up about 100 dollars a month in prescription coverage, but if she was working, even that would be covered by her employer 95 percent of the time.
She did complain about having to pay into auto insurance government pool, and said she wished they had our system of auto insurance, so she could pay less, because of her good driving record......I reminded her, that, although our freedom to choose rates is great, we also have to deal with a massive amount of uninsured drivers, and they are usually the worst drivers we have (since they have rates that are so high they cannot afford, one can only assume lots of accidents, dui's or tickets). After reminding her of that fact, she did say that was a good point, and they did not have that problem up there.
Overall, she would not trade her Canadian Health Coverage for ours. She is very happy with their system, and she said she would like to see her system implemented with a few changes to make it better, but overall was very happy with the One Payer System that Canada has.
The average American family of 4 will pay over 10K a year for health coverage to a private insurer that may deny coverage for pre existing conditions, or conditions not covered....this is what Medicine for profit is all about......we cannot fix what we have built here in America....merely bulldoze it and start over.
