“County hospitals and Clinics are still there and still provide services for free to those without money.” and who pays for that? Oh yeah, the taxpayer. I'm pretty sure a county by county health care system would be more costly and less efficient than a national one that can negotiate better prices for actual care.

“People spend thousands of dollars and many hard years becoming doctors and deserve to be paid for their work just like anyone else.” Doctors prefer national healthcare 59% to 32%. Why? A doctor explains.

A few years ago, after crossing the midway point in my career, I decided that I had seen too many bankruptcies, too many mortgage foreclosures, too many financial crises to remain silent on the health care issue. I have seen too many patients deluged with bills after beginning cancer treatment, too many patients forgo treatment of high blood pressure, diabetes and other problems of major public health significance because they simply couldn't afford it.

He also points out how the uninsured pay others' bills without getting any care for themselves.Uninsured Americans pay taxes for federal, state and municipal employees, veterans, the military, prisoners, the Indian Health Service, the homeless, the community health centers, the renal failure program, Medicare, Medicaid. But after paying for all those groups to have health coverage, they themselves have nothing. This is one of the greatest injustices in our health care system. In a single-payer system, everyone pays in — as we do for the above groups, but then every single citizen has health insurance.
The current system disadvantages small businesses and their employees.

The vast majority of small businesses in the United States do not provide health coverage to their employees because they can't afford it. The United States is the only developed country that systematically discriminates against the owners and employees of small businesses in this way. This is completely dysfunctional. Single-payer health care would provide coverage to all citizens — period. This allows everyone to work in the job that suits them best, without having the least concern about health coverage — as occurs in every other developed country. With no exceptions, countries with government-run health care plans are the most efficient — they waste less money on advertising, administration, extravagant salaries, etc. They provide the best outcomes, longer life expectancy, lower infant mortality and, with only a few exceptions, they are enormously popular with the people they serve. In every one of those countries, no one is left out — everyone is insured from cradle to grave, there are no bankruptcies or foreclosures related to health costs, and the cost to business and government is on average half what we pay per capita in the United States.

As for EEllis' point on infant mortality, quibbling over the numbers on one datapoint makes no difference in the overall outcome. In every other modern wealthy nation, people get better care with better outcomes at lower cost. That's what I want. He then implies that I would lecture instead of helping a friend in trouble. Bullshit. I have helped friends with the expenses their insurance companies didn't cover, devastating their finances and their families. That doesn't happen in any other modern nation. So, EEllis, are you seriously suggesting charity as a national health policy? A policy that lets families be destroyed by health care costs then expects them to beg friends for help? That's pathetic.

BTW, no one answered any of my questions about bailing out the health insurance companies. 14,000 Americans are losing their coverage every day, and of course, insurance companies are losing 14,000 customers every day.

Why can't you have a discussion without the constant attacks? I'm all for caring for ones own, I did mention County Hospitals didn't I. I just prefer to minimize federal involvement. Selfish? I don't thinks so. If we were sitting in a bar and someone mentioned our friend “Fred” was sick and his family was having trouble with the bills I'm sure you would quickly jump to your soapbox and preach universal health care. I would reach into my pocket and help gathering money for his family. Now why would that make me “selfish”. It is well known that “conservatives” donate more to charities so maybe it's more complicated than we hate “those” people. Hell as I said I am one of the great uninsured.

Bringing up WHO, you did read the link before making yourself look like an idiot right/ There was a link to WHO where they said you can't compare the data because of the different ways it's complied, you know, like you just did. http://whqlibdoc.who.int/publications/2006/9241...

Of course I have noticed you tend to be shot on facts and long on rhetoric. Good intentions is no excuse for smugness, arrogance and condescension.

You know this dogma has been repeated so often that many believe it wholeheartedly. Too bad it simply isn't true.
http://deanesmay.com/2009/05/15/the-myth-of-com...

And from that so people can get a better idea:

“BRITAIN tops the developed world league table for infant deaths”
from http://www.dailyexpress.co.uk/posts/view/15640

But many specialists blame lack of medical care for the high number of premature baby deaths. They say chronic shortages of NHS staff mean many mothers are not monitored properly.

And they say many premature infants are at risk because staff shortages mean they do not have the recommended level of care. Overstretched NHS resources mean increasing numbers of sick and preterm infants are forced to undergo risky journeys across the country to find a suitable cot.

Beverley Beech, of the Association for the Improvement of Maternity Services, said: “Maternity services have reached crisis levels and we know babies die because of inappropriate care and poor staffing levels in the NHS.

Sounds so much better than anything we have doesn't it?

It's a heartless view in my opinion and not a good reflection on Americans as human beings. Now I see (see above) the same attitude applied toward public education. Just as they no longer feel a civic duty to care for sick or injured people, they want to abandon public schools and take their kids to private schools at public expense, and those who can't afford to opt out of a then-less-capable public system. Screw em. They could work harder and be successful. So much judgment of the less fortunate; so much blame. Our elders? Damn entitlements! Cut those back. It's all “me and what I want right now.”

But forgetting all that. My goal is to see that all citizens of the world's wealthiest nation have the best possible health care at the lowest cost. Right now, that's single payer. You don't think so, but can't point to a single study that shows us having health care outcomes to match the top couple dozen industrialized nations ahead of us in longevity, infant mortality, cancer, heart disease and every other measurable outcome of health care. Further, I think all Americans should have at least the bare minimum we would want our friends and family to have: food, water, shelter and medical care. I believe we should educate them too, not as a freebie or “nanny state” childish expectation (as is argued here), but because it benefits US as a nation.

There is nothing unnatural about a tribe caring for its own; just the opposite. To me it is unnatural for a “tribe” to forget that its success depends on cohesion, not selfish individuals casting the weakest to the elements so as not to be bothered by any feeling of duty or responsible to those who helped them prosper.

None of these selfish creatures who call themselves “conservatives” advanced to where they are without the benefits of living in a place with a pretty damn good government. Now they have nothing but scorn and contempt for it. You one of them?

By who? That's right someone else other than you. Govt money dosn't just appear it's taken from people, in even greater amounts if this happens, before it pays the Docs.

I say again

There is something profoundly unnatural in holding others liable for what you should responsible for.

They have a high standard of living–that's why they're considered part of the developed world.

Their doctors and other providers get paid.

As for health care, are you guys really arguing that our decisions in this area should be made by hard-ass uncaring actuarials? A sort of “screw em if they're sick or injured. We don't care” health care system. How very strange.

Now, as the other threads seem to have expired, let me repeat a question for those determined to extend government largess to insurance companies:

First, in terms of delivering health care at reduced cost, here's what single payer systems deliver: anyone, rich or poor can walk in and get world class health care for free, no bill, no billing cost, no mountains of paperwork, no departments of claims denial experts, no “new product” developers trying to come up with a fancy new “product” or marketers trying to come up with slick methods of convincing “customers” that they're going to do better than company Y at paying your bill. What are the contributions of any of these “features” of insurance companies to actual health care?

The next question for proponents of the for-profit model, is this: For background, economic problems drive companies to cut costs by dropping their employee health insurance programs

Surging health care costs are making it increasingly tough for employers to offer health insurance coverage to their workers, according to the report. And many employers have replaced permanent, full-time jobs with contract, part-time and temporary jobs without health benefits, the [Institute of Medicine] panel said.

More Americans will lose their health insurance as the economy weakens, health care becomes more expensive and fewer employers offer coverage, the U.S. Institute of Medicine said in a report on Tuesday.

And increases in unemployment will further fuel the decline in the number of people with employer-sponsored coverage and put additional stress on state Medicaid and children's health insurance programs, the panel of experts in health economics and policy said.

Studies show that people without health insurance wait longer to get important medical care, running up larger bills in the end.

And HERE

The economic downturn is forcing working families across the United States to make tough financial choices, often involving sacrificing needed health care and health insurance. Using data from four years of the Commonwealth Fund Biennial Health Insurance Survey, this report examines the status of health insurance for U.S. adults under age 65 and the implications for family finances and access to health care. Insurance coverage deteriorated over the past six years, with declines in coverage most severe for moderate-income families. As result, more families are experiencing medical bill problems or cost-related delays in getting needed care. In 2007, nearly two-thirds of U.S. adults, or an estimated 116 million people, struggled to pay medical bills, went without needed care because of cost, were uninsured for a time, or were underinsured (i.e., were insured but not adequately protected from high medical expenses).

Reuters reports medical bills as the cause of 62% of personal bankruptcies. These people can no longer afford insurance, even if their expensive pre-existing conditions allowed it. Bloomberg reports 14,000 Americans every day are losing their employer-based health insurance. As increasing unemployment makes people lose their employer paid health care, are you willing to bail out the insurance companies, who are already losing customers to the economic downturn (-9 million customers for United Health Care)? How far are you willing to go to support a health-care system mediated by for-profit insurance companies? Obviously, the same influence that insurance companies now wield to kill the “public option,” will be used to convince Congress that the insurers are “too big to fail.” Since we won't have a public option, they will argue that “millions of Americans will be without health insurance if we fail.” How ironic that we could have “single payer” as we pump massive taxpayer bailouts into the insurance companies.

Will the same people arguing here to preserve the insurance company profits then argue, as they have with bank and auto company bailouts, that we should “let them fail?” They'll blast Obama for increasing deficits as he bails out the same people conservatives are now heralding as the essential elements in free market health care. Or perhaps those here will argue that people should be required by law to have health insurance, as they are currently required to have liability insurance. The uninsured will get a broken arm set at the hospital, and then be arrested for not having insurance, incurring additional cost of enforcement as we criminalize not buying a commercial product. Of course, we will pay for their health care in prison, plus room and board. Or we'll fine broke, unemployed people and garnish future wages making them indentured servants to the insurance industry.

It's a matter of what is practical within the construct of a limited federal institution. Nationalizing healthcare so we can look more empathetic isn't seen as a good trade-off. Of course literally laughing at the concept is the wrong approach and only serves to make conservatives look like asshats.

This is the key, which applies not only to patients like you, Dennis, but the other participants: providers.

I have foreseen federal health care, and am surprised only by the premature timing by the Obama team on this (I am not surprised, though quite disgusted, by what Congress is doing), though the Obama timing has been premature before and they're rushing to do too much, too soon (unless it's simply that Obama wants to seize Dem power while it is stronger than it has been for ages, and while many of the public are still not thinking and concerned about the consequences as well as the scope and timing of all that is being attempted by Washington, and can still be exploited).

The reason for federal health care is that it's likely that all other alternatives will be seen as impractical or insufficient eventually, leaving federal health care as the Default. There's no need to wait until advantages in genetics and better understanding of the genome make pre-existing-condition restrictions and insurance-company recissions a worse problem than now. Don't forget that many providers are ready for federal health care because it would simplify an insurance-paperwork-related nightmare. (The only question is if junk lawsuits, the other major problem, will be reformed eventually somehow.)