every other country covers everyone at half the cost, with better wait times. so it can be done here too. the thing is, they started from scratch and built their healthcare systems from the ground up... not trying to redo a country like ours with a third of a billion people in it. what could happen if we tried to make it universal? the most obvious problem would be that the democrats dont do anything to get costs down first, or they cave when costs are contained with a medicare like pricing system. (which sets limits on how much can be spent) and speicial interests complain about it. the republicans could repeal any taxes that are used to pay for a new system. so it's definitely possible to bankrupt us based on health care... is what i'm getting at.
how do other countries spend half as much as we do? they mostly get it down to that level by regulating how much the government is willing to pay for each procedure, they regulate costs. they also minimize the role of insurance, which helps given insurance is a middle man that pays a third just in adminstrative costs instead of the two percent that medicare pays. (some hospitals have more staff to take care of billing than they do nurses, for instance)
if we're not doing more of these cost containing things, we're headed in the wrong direction.
if we dont do anything about costs, we could end up bankrupt switching to something universal. we only have ten percent of folks who are uninsured... which means it's not earth shattering if we didn't cover those few extra people. it would be earth shattering to borrow money to pay for it. that's why the emphasis shouldn't be on universal care, it should be on getting costs contained.
sometimes it is wise to be skeptical if a public option or universal plan could work... we're trying to redo an embedded system, and politicians are good at fucking things up. it's rational to only focus on getting costs contained...that's the biggest problem.
