@TheRealMafoo: I'm really surprised someone is actually suggesting this during the current financial crisis. It shows what can happen when you let the market decide its own course. And while the current crisis is "only about money", your healthcare system is actually about human lives.

@HappySqurriel: Can you define "preventable" for me? Does that include every problem which originates from being overweight, smoking, drinking alcohol as well as every accident that harms an individual? Cause from Peter Moore you should know that "things break"

How is this different from current HMOs? Pretty much everything described already exists in most major HMOs.

Preventable usually refers to diseases with a known cause which are as a result of exposure to a known causative agent or avoidable lifestyle factors.

However preventing people from getting sick 30 years from now by implementing broad sweeping changes to healthcare, social welfare, public education, and a myriad other fields, while ultimately achievable, admirable and in the long run, cost effective, won't win anybody votes in the short term, thus won't happen.

However providing affordable, quality healthcare to all citizens of a country isn't such a pipe dream and does in fact occur right now, in many countries.

Companys that give you healthcare actually offer bonus' now for living healthier.  They also used to make you pay more if you lived unhealthier but they of course got sued.

In my system, it's in the hospitals best interest to make sure you are heathy. In the current system, it is not. In my system, I would think the private hospital would require regular checkups, shots, whatever, to make sure you don't get sick. They would want to find cancer in you soon, so it can be removed early before it cost a lot. This would save far more lives then the occasional person having to wait 10 more minutes would kill. 

Your system seems remarkably similar to the current situation. The ones with the greatest need would be charged the most and be less likely to be able to pay. The only difference is they wouldn't be able to get emergency services and would die at a greater rate. So long as a hospital is operating for profit then they will have to charge the patients that are worst off the most. So long as the worst illnesses cause tremendous physical disability then those in the greatest need will be the least capable of playing.

If we really want to chop out a lot of the cost of health care we should just copy Canada's system. I won't say it is great, but it is a hell of a lot cheaper per person than what we currently have.

You mean the ones actually using the service pay more for it? Um... yea, that's how it works :p. I feel though, for that demographic, even if they are paying the most, they would be paying less then they pay today.

Again, I am not against government subsidizing particular demographics. I am just against the US government running anything. I worked for them for 8 years, and understand how the government works (or doesn't work).

Nothing we put in the hands of the US government is going to be better then something regulated by the dollar. It might work great in other places, but our government was not designed to handle social programs well. 

 They might be paying less, but that would be because they would pay nothing at all. With emergency services, and hospitals being forced to offer some form of medical care in life or death situations. Have a long history of heart disease, and live in a crime ridden neighborhood? Better hope you can pay the sky-high premium the hospital would need to charge to maintain any form of profitability.

 I don't buy the crap about not being able to set-up a system for socialized health care either. We have managed to have police, fire, postal, road work, and a number of other essential service be government run and function fairly well. FEMA even seems to have found a way to run somewhat efficiently after being exposed as entirely incompetent a few years back.

So essentially, your basing your idea on the ideological concept that private industry is superior to public services.

A concept, that while always popular in the United States, has taken a slight hit during the recent financial... "troubles"

can't compare Sweden to the U.S.