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Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Katelew who wrote (4015)	1/18/2008 8:41:47 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

What would be the point? So that we could apply the French or British or Canadian model to the US to see what difference it might actually make for us. I know the proponents of socialized health insurance claim that simply because those countries spend less than we do or have higher life expectancies, that our switching to that system would get our costs down to their level and our life expectancy up to their level. This is just bogus because there are so many other variables. But true believers don't want logic, preferring mantras. If we had a computer model of one of these systems we could fiddle with the variables to see what effect they had on both costs and life expectancy. We could factor in our murder rate or obesity levels, our wage expectancies, our average distance from trauma centers, for example, and our insurance coverage rates to see how any of those might change the bottom line. I'm really getting tired of replying "that has not been demonstrated" every time someone falls back on the mantras. It would be nice to have a model with all the factors that could be manipulated to reflect the differences between us and the other countries. True believers will hold fast to their mantras no matter what, but there must be some people who, while superficially attracted, would be receptive to the demonstrations. It would give all of us a better understanding of the possibilities.