How so? The productivity figure is an average of the total productivity in the entire population. Increasing the average would increase the total.

It’s disingenuous to argue that you could increase the number of people who are covered by the healthcare system, maintain people’s access to healthcare, and maintain the average quality without seeing noticeable cost increases without dramatically decreasing the number of preventable illnesses and injuries (and the massive cost associated with bureaucracy).

With that said, I expect the United States will probably "pay for" government run services by rationing services and from the revenue generated from cap-n-trade; and I wouldn't be surprised to see higher taxes introduced on Tobacco, Alcohol and Junk Food.

Edit: Since I want to preempt the claim that there are no problems associated with other Government run healthcare systems around the world, I will just let the statistics I saw earlier today from the government of Saskatchewan do the talking for me. The following website tracks the wait times associated with surgical procedures that are performed after the surgery has been scheduled by a specialist; and, while it is not tracked on this site, the wait time to see a specialist in Canada typically ranges from 1 to 6 months. Please note that a biopsy is considered a seperate surgical procedure, and if a doctor schedules a biopsy the surgical wait time begins after the biopsy is completed.

http://www.sasksurgery.ca/wli-wait-list-info.htm

Just because I was doubted earlier when I suggested that the primary reason why Americans have such better survival rates when it comes to prostate cancer than other nations was because of how efficient and high quality the American healthcare system is. In Saskatchewan only 15% of men can get a Prostatectomy within 6 weeks of it being scheduled, and over 45% wait 4 months or more; and when you factor in wait times for seeing a specialist, and any time associated with diagnostic surgery, this translates to (roughly) 50% of prostate cancer patients waiting 6 months or more for a Prostatectomy. If you're an individual who was unfortunate enough to have your cancer found late it is highly likely that you will die unless you do what so many Canadians do, and that is travel to the United States and pay for healthcare to save your life.

Having universal healthcare may decrease the average productivity of the entire population by decreasing peoples drive to work hard.

Americans are top of the charts in everything productivity wise more or less.  Lack of socialism may be a reason.

More people are overtreated rather then undertreated in the US. 

It's one of the reasons we spend too much on healthcare.

With money.

You pay for it by getting the cost per person down to a reasonable level. Your government already spends enough money to provide a level of care greater than that of Canada (Canada chosen due to the similarities between lifestyles and geography).

Graph care of OECD Health Data 2009. Bottom Bar is government expenditure. Top bar is personal expenditure.

(per person)

That's an interesting chart. In the US, the government today covers less then 15% of the population, and the cost is about the same as private insurance covering over 60% of Americans.

Not a good sign for them doing it in a cost productive way.

^^the low value obtained per dollar is definatly quite shocking, and makes me believe that change will not succeed.

low value?  When it comes to major diseases your more likely to recover in the US then anywhere else in the world.

People have a lower life expectancy in the US but that's largely due to culture... not illness or healthcare. 

The US for example is 20th in the world for heart disease... and the 1st first world country.

Yet a bunch of 1st world countries are ahead of us in deaths in the first world due to heart disease.

an amount of money that is enough to cover all of the per person healthcare expenditures (both public and private) in a country such as australia, but yet covers 15% (dont know the number myself just using real mafoo's number to which I was referring) of the population is low value per dollar.

Oh for the government?  Yeah... government run healthcare doesn't work that well.  Partly because it's a special interest struggle.

To be fair though the government is covering most of the old people, the military and the poor.

A lot of that is going into retirement homes, counciling for PTS disorder and other such things.

Overall though... the US has pretty decent healthcare... probably because the US, because it uses private medicine overmedicates instead of undermedicates.  Which means stuff like cancer is more likely to be discovered in the early stages.

In the US yearly or even bi-yearly checkups when you feel perfectly healthy is the norm a lot of the time.  Even people on government insurance.

You get painkillers and antibiotics for the littlest things, MRI's and all kinds of X-rays for every little acident etc.