Democrats should heed this warning from Mass.

[famousringo]

Chairman-Mao said:

famousringo said:

Chairman-Mao said:
Socialized health care isn't as good as people think. I'm Canadian and we have it. Our taxes are much higher and if you don't get injured then you're paying higher taxes for nothing.

Did you know that the United States spends more government money as a share of GDP on health than Canada does? The average Canadian isn't actually paying more taxes for health care than the average American does. You or your employer might be paying less in premiums, though.

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_exp_pub_of_gdp-health-expenditure-public-of-gdp

Really? That seems odd. Where's the money going then if the US doesn't have free health care?

US health care costs are out of control, and it means that even though public health programs only cover part of the American population, public and private insurers alike end up paying more. There are so many reasons why that I wouldn't even dare to suggest that I know which is the most important.

For starters, the cost of administration in the US is roughly twice as high as it is in Canada as a share of all health spending. One of the perks of a single-payer system is that there's a lot less paper to push around. Patients simply present their health card and walk on in.

Another reason is that drug prices are less controlled in the US and drug patents are stronger. This is why so many Americans import drugs from Canada. The counter argument is that more money for drug companies means more drug reasearch, although the value of the tradeoff is debatable: About half of medical research spending in the US is public money.

Some say that the threat of litigation encourages doctors to overtreat patients rather than risk a malpractice suit, consuming far more labour, equipment and material than ought to be necessary.

I'm sure there are quite a few other reasons that aren't off the top of my head. The bottom line is that the structure of the US health system is so rotten that it doesn't really have the advantages of a free market system or a socialized system. The size of the gap between US health spending as a share of GDP and that of the second highest OECD country is about the same size as US military spending.