This is one great thing about National Healthcare. You force private insurance to provide better service for less, as they now have to compete against a standard of service with a fixed cost.

it also removes the need for insurance companies to get charged huge prices at the hospital to cover the uninsured.

Again, if we had a flat tax system, I would be more for this. I am still against providing a service to 40% of the country that won't contribute any of there time to maintain it.

And Tyrannical is right. We need to fix out immigration issue. right new, the 12 million + illegal aliens can go to any hospital and get treated. This is a drain on out current system, and will be a drain on any future system.

Another idea I am for is no income tax at all, and collect all the funds through sales tax. This would mean everyone pays taxes, even illegal aliens. Money is time, I think it's stupid to tax the conversion of your time. Tax when you spend your time.

It's another form of flat tax.

The UK pays more than two times less for healthcare than America does.  If they increased their funding to match Americas, every Brit would have a personal nurse to wipe their a$$ for them.

Here's some quick and easy to interpret stats about world healthcare.

Healthcare expenditure per capita:

USA - $6,100                                                                                                                                                                               UK - $2,900

Healthcare expenditure percent of GDP:

USA - 15.4 %                                                                                                                                                                            UK - 8.1 %

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_exp_per_cap_cur_us-expenditure-per-capita-current-us

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_exp_tot_of_gdp-health-expenditure-total-of-gdp

You mean countries with sparsed populations like Sweden, Finland, or Norway?  Whom also happen to have national healthcare systems.

Density actually isnt an issue.  Its an issue of health (in terms of proximity to care and time to get treatment), but the cost comparison is the same.  I really dont see where people make up these stats.  If a hospital covers 5,000 people in a 10 mile square area (urban) is compared to a hospital that covers 5,000 people in a 100 mile square (rural area), the cost is virtually the same.

If anything sparsely populated areas are less efficient in the free market. You can have competing hospitals in an urban area while hospitals in rural areas have natural monopolies due to the distances to competitors.

Don't forget that the federal government in America already spends as much on healthcare as the UK does, and only covers a fraction of the poor.

I think for us who live in other western countries, it is hard to understand why there is so much animosity towards national health care in the U.S. Our system is not perfect either, but in general the standard is very high.

In Norway, where I live, all hospital treatment is 100% free. Our primary health care service (your doctor) are almost all private practitioners that have an agreement with the state to get reimbursed. You can choose whatever doctor you want in your home municipality, but you can only switch doctors a couple of times in one year. You can also go to any of many completely private practices, but then you have to pay the full fee yourself, with no state subsidy.

Going to your regular doctor is NOT completely free either however, we currently have to pay a fee of about 20 Euros (25 dollars) for a doctor's apointment, which in Norway is a fairly small amount of money (it's a little more than what a low-paying job gives you for 1 hours work). Prescription drugs are subsidized, but not completely free either.

The beauty of the system, in my opinion, is that you DO have to pay a little to get your medicines and to go see the doctor, which probably prevent a lot of people from running to the doctor for just a cold. However, if you have real medical issues, and need to see the doctor a lot, there is a roof on how much you have to pay out of your own pocket in a year, currently about 200 Euros. After you've spent 200 Euros on doctor appointments + prescription drugs in one year, you get a so called "free card", which means the state pays for whatever you need after that. This ensures that no one gets ruined on medical bills.

In addition, treatment of children under the age of 12, all doctor's appointments and checkups related to a pregnancy, testing and treatment of dangerous infectious diseases or sexually transmitted diseases like HIV, chlamydia etc is always free, as the government wants people to always go to the doctor and get tested when they suspect they have something like this.

Density may not be much of an issue in European sized countries but i would be referring to sparsely populated areas like Australia, Canada and Alaska.  There are many parts in Australia where you are looking at areas of hundreds of thousands of square kilometres before you'd have the population to justify even a small primary care hospital, yet there is still an obligation to provide care to people living in these areas.  A single large facility (say 500 beds) in a high population area is far more cost and resource efficient than 10, 50 bed hospitals, which is in the order of magnitude of what is required through much of Australia.

ours would work better if we werent right next door to the US. they are able to offer a lot of money to our medical graduates, due to the higher cost of health care in the US. leaving us with some shortages of talented individuals.

??? I heard the situation in the UK is quite bad when you need a medical intervention ??

I don't think it will ever work in the US because health care costs are out of control and don't even get me started on pharmaceutical companies who are only in business to get rich off sick people instead of finding actual cures for diseases.

 Right. This could potentially help small business owners.