America vs. Canada: "I can't go to the hospital..."

[mwooldri]

43. It can be afforded. Right now.

I would also bet that it would bring down the deficit too but it wouldn't be very popular going through the process.

The UK covers its population with universal healthcare with about the same amount of money that is spent on US medicare each year. multiply the medicare budget by 5, and there's your budget. Increase the medicare tax, everyone in the USA has medical coverage. Doctors would be independent contractors. Office staff would deal with only one insurance company. Yes there will be waiting lists for non urgent care. Existing hospitals would run as non profits only, and would have to take the standard reimbursement rate. Costs can be cut further if a lot of these hospitals were nationalized. The UK's NHS is one of the largest employers in the world. Multiply that by five. It would be nice to tell the world that Medicare USA is the worlds largest employer.

Why won't it work here? Big Insurance and Big Pharma. Their businesses would disappear. Big pharma won't be able to rip off the public in the way they do now. For profit hospitals would have a much smaller customer base. There will be no need for adverts for medicines on TV or in print as doctors will have no choice but to prescribe the best drug for the patient rather than be swayed by what a pharma sales rep in a sales push. And there is a significant minority who thinks government healthcare is the root of all evil, despite many of them being on medicare...

So until commonsense prevails or we get people in Congress who are bold enough to go thus way we will be stick with what we have.