Sounds like you don't disagree, but differ on the solution. My question is if a compromise between Switzerland and the United States system offered was the Canada system would you take it?  Are the draw backs of Canada you see if applied to the US greater than the current US system's issues?

What is the Republican obsession of the trickle down effect? Lying to middle class voters saying they will be the main focus of tax cuts when it is obvious who the ones that will benefit the most are. I have yet to see a Republican show any facts that cutting the top percent actually benefits the lower brackets.

Very few people disagree that the U.S healthcare system needs reform. The question people disagree on is what it should be reformed into. 

As far as I can tell, no U.S legislator wants to incorporate the Canadian system either. The Canadian system works by their central government block-granting provincial governments. In order to earn the block grants, the provincial governments must incorporate "universal healthcare" along certain guidelines. If the U.S government were to block grant the state governments, without any strings attached I'd rather that than merely institute "medicare for all" I would be more willing to accept such legislation. No senator or congressman wants to do this though, because the majority of uninsured are in very red states, and the states probably won't cooperate. So then we have "medicare for all." Well I see some immediate problems with "medicare for all." Let's assume it can be funded through tax increases (which I am skeptical of), I am concerned that consolidating all health-care spending into the hands of the central government gives legislators too much power on what it is spent on. For example, in Britain they are still struggling to approve PrEP/Truvada, because it isn't cost effective. If my insurance company didn't pay for PrEP/Truvada, I can always choose a different insurance company that does. Consequently, most insurance companies cover PrEP/Truvada. 

Republicans are already trying to get rid of abortion spending in Medicaid, and a certain segement of Republicans would probably find PrEP/Truvada cost-ineffective for reasons not related to cost. For people at a high risk of HIV this is a problem because the drug is expensive without insurance. 

I'd rather have an inneffcient system where I get to decide what healthcare I receive than an efficent one where I don't. 

So unfortunately, due to the political effects of having evangelicals and social conservatives in congress, I can't support a national single-payer system. 

There is a tradeoff here between what you get and how much you save. 

The choice that plays out over and over in the US these days is "freedom to go bankrupt or freedom to elect to die".  The idea of not supporting a change, even an imperfect one, because it doesn't solve everything, makes little sense to me.  Conservatives have spent decades making life harder in regards to family planning, they would likely continue doing it to me, but I'd at least get my life saving medication.  I'd fight that battle as well, but I wouldn't turn down a massive improvement because it doesn't afford me everything I'd like.

Studying US history many movements are gradual with generational victories. If women wanted full equality in 1910s to be bundled with right to vote they'd win that maybe by the 1980s. In the meantime they'd suffer all sorts of set backs.

If we can at least get people to the table that what we have now is poor and we can do better that is a step forward. What I've seen from congress and the administration is to make it worse. We fight against poorly thought out repeals and for soemthing better. In my mind better means more American citizens getting care regardless of income.  Maybe we get the medicare age lowered to 50, see the issues, and try to do better as lower it to 40, then 30, and finally to everyone. I can compromise on elements, but the over arching idea of going back to pre ACA or sticking with ACA seems cruel and I don't understand it.

To be honest, I watched about 10 mins of it and I had to speed it up to 1.5 to get just that far. She really likes to drag things out in between her points so it's make it diffcult to pay attention. I disagree with her on defending the rights of "marginalized" people over others just on general principal. I think that's where she was going with it. I believe in equality with the good and bad. You're free to say what you want unless you threaten someone or call for others to commit violence. 

The overwhelming majority of medical decisions are not about catastrophe (you have one choice: get immediate care or die.) This is a subset of cases (about 2%) , which you are sensitive to, since you have a life-threatening illness, but most people don't make this choice. Most people are worried about preventing diseases or making non-life threatening illness bearable as they age and its inevitability comes to bear. A good health-care system should work for everyone's benefit, not just those with life-threatening illnesses. Many Americans spend thousands on end-of-life care, for example, which is designed to prolong as healthy a life as possible for the elderly. Under a single-payer system this would not be allowed by the state for way of "cost-effectiveness." 

You'd get your life-saving treatement (so long as its "cost-effective"), and I'd lose the medication which reduces my chances of contracting an illness that can be life-threatening and costly to treat. There is no single trade-off here, and everyone has different health concerns. 

And my problem isn't that "medicare for all" doesn't go far enough, it is that it goes too far in one direction without considering other problems that arise from its existence. My other problem is that it attempts to solve the problem (uninsured people need access to health-care) by sacrificing the care of or security of other people. I am not going to support such a solution if there are other, more palatable, and applicable solutions to the problem of not all people having access to healthcare. 

In fact, it are the people who want "medicare for all" and nothing else who really are the one's who can't compromise. They'd rather abolish the entire healthcare market rather than reform it, and people rightfully oppose that because about 70% of people are satisfied with the care they get. 

I am skeptical that "Medicare for all" would be even cost-effective unless the benefits that medicare recipients get are reduced drastically. I mean we spend more on Medicare and Medicaid than we do on education or the military, and that is only for people over the age of 65. What happens if it were expanded to the entire population? There would have to be strong cuts to what it provides. The elimination of administrative costs aren't going to make the whole difference. I am more open to the idea of letting people with pre-existing conditions buy into Medicaid. 

I guess it mostly depends on the meaning of the words 'left' and 'right'. They're very vague, and people can't seem to completely agree on their exact meanings. In my country, 'left' is often used as a synonym for socialist, while 'right' is liberal.

I think these two words are pretty outdated and useless, I prefer to use words like socialist, liberal, progressive, conservative, authoritarian, anarchist...

Agreed, I see the "left" and "right" as anachronisms that explained Revolutionary France and the politics that came out of it well, but are hard to apply to modern world coalitions. 

Having said that, there were trends in the views of the people who sat on the left and who sat on the right in the French assembly during the revolutions (where this paradigm originated.) 

The people who sat on the left were more often liberal (cherished individual freedom), anti-state (against the consolidation of violence into one institution), anti-hierarchy (against the domination of one group or class over all others), anti-traditionalist (against accepting things merely because they were always done that way), and anti-monarchist (against the idea that the monarchy was sovereign.) 

State socialists really only seem focused on one hierarchical system (capitalism) and say very little about individual freedom otherwise, the status of the state, whether or not a monarchy is okay, and conflict with the left when it takes positions that individual liberty must cede to collective power, hierarchy is okay if the people approve, the proleteriat can rule other non-proleteriats, institutions that help the proleteriat mustn't be questioned, etc. 

Then you also get the technocrats who hide under socialist dressings. All they really want is to create a society in which an educated ruling elite instructs all human activity according to technical standards. That is left-wing? 

If we are to be strictly reductionist, I only really consider left-libertarians and a subset of liberals to be left-wing. The rest probably would have sat on the right of the French assembly if the aristocrats who sat on it created a welfare state and exterminated the bourgeoisie. I mean state-socialists did ally with Bismarck after all, so strong was their disdain of enlightenment values. That is where the social democratic movement sprouted. 

Many issues I've witnessed is the rolling cost of healthcare leading to bakruptcy.  It's listed as the numbe  one reason Americans file so it's not a small number of people who find medical bills to be a massive burden that reduces the quality of their lives.  The average person (50% of the population) has $1000 or less rainy day fund.  These costs to the economy have all sorts of knock off effects that could be avoided.  Many people I know avoid the doctor and self medicate due to the costs, how many illnesses get worse because regular medical treatment is seen as a privelege?

Can you point to a country doing that? For example does Canada deny care to elderly for fiscal responsibility? I looked it up and Canada is 12th on life expectancy and the US is 31st. I understand all sorts of variables there, but these systems don't seem to diminish length of life one would expect to enjoy.

My finding is US spends 3.2 trillion on healthcare per year.  Medicare for all would shift that to an estimated 1.9 trillion per year.  Per person that would shift us into alignment with other countries.  Can correct numbers if you found differently.

I'm not sucking up, but I appreciate your nuance in this discussion and not attacking me.  I think consensus is there, its a matter of how rather than if.  No system will match all of our demands, but working toward something better is a start so I appreicate that sentiment.

With the most liberal estimate, less than .18% of Americans declare bankrupsy per year due to medical bills. Considering that 10% of the country is uninsured, that makes sense. The problem that needs to be solved is to get these people insured, which can come about through multiple means. We are arguing about the problems of single-payer not the problems of the current system, which I agree isn't good. 

Almost every country with a monopsony on healthcare spending rations the number of and kind of treatments it will pay for as would any private spender. These countries make a utilitarian estimation where they prioritize young people who need these treatments (because they have more life to live) than elderly people who have only a few years left anyway, and for whom such treatments might have severe and expensive complications. This is a rational thing to do, but Americans aren't going to do it. They want their grandparents to live another ten years and are willing to spend the money to try, if they have it (and most do.) Likewise with luxury care (private rooms, expedient specialist services, etc.) Much of the higher spending in the U.S are on these things, and there is a demand for them. Switching to a single-payer system will not keep these people happy. Targetting universal healthcare through a multipayer system will though, and everyone will be satisfied. Those consumers who want to spend on luxury and end of life care will be satisfied. Those persons who need basic care but can't afford it currently, will be satisfied. Win, win. 

As for the life-expectancy claim, there are thousands of variables which determine life expectancy including culture, lifestyle, and health education, which are the primary ones. If you compare the culturally, financially, and demographically similar Northern United States to Canada, you find similar life-expectancies. When you start including southern states, where people live high risk lifestyles and more are uninsured, then the U.S metric drops down. This is mostly irrelevant to what I was talking about anyway. End of life and luxury care focuses on the quality of life in the last few years, not just the length of it. 

In 2016 the U.S government spent 28% of its budget on Medicaid + Veteran's Affair + Medicare. That is about $1.1 trillion on only 37% (120 million people get one or the other) of the population. Do you think the other 63% of the population can be covered for only 800 billion dollars and the services they receive won't be reduced/rationed? I am not buying the idea that we can turn $2.1 trillion in private + state government healthcare spending into only 800 billion of spending without a reduction in the following things: doctor compensation, services received, spending on medical technology and investements, or an increase in taxes/debt. 

Rather than totally upending the system and throwing everyone into chaos, a few reforms can do the job: 1. eliminate all subsidies to employer sponsored healthcare and replace them with individual subsidies for somebody to buy healthcare on the marketplace, 2. subsidize not-for-profit cooperative care with the savings obtained from the elimination of federal subsidies. Basically if a group of people want to pool their resources together for health-care they should get the benefits that the employer would had. 3. Eliminate restrictions on the importation of medicine/drugs and expedite the FDA approval process, reduce the time that a company can have a patent on a drug, 4. eliminate the AMA's stranglehold on the licensing of doctors which artificially limit the supplies of doctors in certain fields.

All of this will allow people to disentangle health-care coverage from employement, allow prices to come down since for-profit insurance companies can no longer make profits on basic care if they compete with not-for-profit cooperatives, and bring drug prices down because there are no longer strong artificial barriers in the creation and importation of drugs. It does all this while maintaining consumer choice in the specific health services people want to spend on. This is less disruptive and more compatible with the American political system and culture than single-payer. And it has been proven to work in similar European countries. 

This is why The Netherlands and Switzerland top the European charts in healthcare rankings, year after year. 

https://healthpowerhouse.com/files/EHCI_2016/EHCI_2016_report.pdf