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

To: Road Walker who wrote (11403)	11/17/2009 12:30:59 PM
From: i-node	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

The premise is clearly wrong. It's a "when did you stop beating your wife" question. If you are working with a budget that is a percentage of GDP, e.g., 16%, you have to decide how to allocate that budget. Is the better health care system one that provides: a) the best care in the world to perhaps 95% with excellent, but lesser coverage provided to the remaining 5%, or b) a lesser quality of coverage that is consistent across the entire spectrum? That really is what we're talking about: allocation of resources. I believe that option (a) -- what we have now -- is better than option (b) -- the option that reflects the desire of SGP or "Government Option" supporters. It would be great if we could have option (a) with 99% coverage, but it simply isn't realistic while keeping the quality of health care at the high levels we currently have. Why can't we have the best of both worlds? Because option (b) implies a revision to the health care finance system that does not encourage progress. That 16%, while high, is what fosters technological achievement and aggressive learning. And yes, the rest of the world benefits from it, even though they don't pay for it directly as we do. I personally don't have a problem with 16% of our GDP going for health care. Or even 20%. It does not bother me that we provide benefits to the rest of world (What better way do we have to spend our money?). What's important is that we make commonsense decisions as a nation about how our money is to be spent. This is not being done (as is evidenced by the stimulus bill).