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

To: Brumar89 who wrote (8847)	8/30/2009 11:15:55 AM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

These are decided and consented to in advance. Sure, but that doesn't mean it isn't rationing. Your choice to not consider certain forms of rationing to be rationing was what was at issue, not whether insurance company rationing is preferable to government program rationing. On that I agree with you. I'm just challenging your refusal to recognize it as rationing. A spade is a spade, that's all I'm saying. Pretending it's not is not helpful. I think its reasonable to compare Britain's government (as a proxy for what governments will do anywhere including here) vs American private insurance. And I think it is not. There are too many uncontrolled variables for the comparison to be scientific. Do you seriously think an American NHS would be more like American private insurance rather than more like the British NHS? I think we can expect an American NHS to be like the British NHS - the advocates of socialized health care here continually hold up the NHS and other countries systems as examples we should emulate. The key factor is competition. If we had single payer here I agree it would devolve into something similar to British single payer. But as long as there is competition, there is pressure on one to live up to the expectations of the other. That's very basic. You assume there will continue to be private plans. In time there won't. And thats intended. I'm not assuming any such thing. I'm taking the question as it was posed. You're the one who is assuming. You claimed "he experience of countries like Britain or Canada are evidence" that "governments impose rationing to a far greater extent than any insurer would or could." I challenged that. We do not have evidence because Britain and Canada have monopolies and we don't so there is no basis for comparison. Our public and private systems play upon each other. If at some point in time we were to have a monopoly, then the British and Canadian experiences would more aptly apply.