We already have a hybrid healthcare system.

Our current healthcare system stinks in my honest opinion.

The costs have risen far more than the rate of inflation the past 8 years. Why is that?

My insurance company and the doctor I have used for years no longer have an agreement together because they both want greater profits. So to see my current doctor I would have to pay out of pocket to see him. Needless to say I had to switch doctors because of that hassle. Health care should not be a commodity and should be heavily regulated (I'm talking insurance) and should prevent insurance companies from making huge profits. They spend ALOT just on lobbyists to remove regulations that allow them to pillage the people of the US.

Why can't we take the best parts of other countries and cover everyone? If we truly are the greatest country in the world, why can't we actually get the smartest minds together to find a system that drives down costs and covers everyone?

I agree our current healthcare system stinks.  Though i disagree that government run healthcare is a solution.

Now government regulation... yeah go nuts.

Put a cap on how much you can profit from each surgery... etc... whatever.

Having the government run it though... that's just going to cause problems... espiecally in a country like ours where elections are funded privately.

Having people pay for their own healthcare and only covering the truly poor is will save money and make people healthier when regulated right.

Since people will feel more motivated to be healthy if the money to stay healthy will come out of their pockets.

I mean look at how well health incentives work when it comes to private insurance.

The only worry with regulating costs is that the US is by far the number 1 medical researcher due to the massive profits. We actually put in mroe money then the rest of the world combined.

We may lose a lot of new healthcare discoveries because of regulating or socializing our healthcare system.

People can support a system already in place. I only mentioned hybrid system because it has components of government run healthcare.

The thing is Kasz, take a wild guess who puts the majority of money into medical research?   The Government does already.  Most medical advances and techniques are found in state run universities when it comes to breakthroughs.   Health Insurance companies aren't the ones funding that.   The same goes for pharmaceutical research.  Universities that get government grants are the ones that discover a use for a medicine and then give the rights to the pharma companies to research and test them to make sure they are ready for FDA approval.  The bulk of the costs is taken by already being paid for by those at the Universities.   Plenty of advances have come out of Canada and the UK which have universal or Socialized medicine.

I honestly don't believe that we'll lose many if any health care discoveries.  All we should be focused on it making sure that health care is affordable and covers everyone.   That will drive down costs for everyone in the US.

Right now, my health care costs me approximately 10% of my monthly income.   That's far too high if you ask me. 

jjseth -

Can you cite a source advising that most medical research breakthroughs are funded with government dollars? Really be interested to see if that is indeed the case.

Look up the NIH and the funding that they do. Many of the grants they put through is to hospitals for research into new medical breakthroughs.  :)

http://report.nih.gov/recovery/arragrants.cfm

I can't post exact links as the site doesn't allow me to link to them as they generate the results each time you enter.  Select a state such as Iowa and look at University of Iowa, which is one of the top medical universities in the nation.

Here's more, on a smaller university in another country and how they do it too and come up with new medical breakthroughs. While we are fairly high on the US, other countries are able and do make medical breakthroughs even if they do have a universal health care.

http://www.adelaide.edu.au/news/news30061.html

Wrong again.  Doctors want public healthcare but, because of fear of a decrease in income (specialists, not so much general practitioners), they do not want the government to have a say on healthcare costs.

Doctors would love for the government run healthcare as long as the government did not set their salary or set the cost of medical procedures.

And here's one for UCLA

http://www.uclahealth.org/body.cfm?id=26

I could go on all day long.. And many of these are paid for with federal money... Some of course is from private donors and fundraising, but that's only a fraction of the cost.