From my own experience having lived under both the US system and under a nationalized health care system, my answer is easy. We can't, as a nation, possibly do any worse than we are now. Have you lived under both systems? If not, what do you base your facts on?
First, I do not think you need to live under both systems to understand the systems... but for some reason you do..
I am saying that the US gvmt is saying they want to spend hundreds of billions of dollars for healthcare... to provide insurance for 'the uninsured'.... so, all that is happening is that the people I presented would go into basically our system and we would pay for it... I do not see where the is a corrisponding REDUCTION of my cost of providing insurance for MY family... so, it cost more.
Now, show me where they are going to IMPROVE the system? What rules and regulations will they pass to make it better? If there are some, just pass them and let the private sector take care of the rest... I do not want my government telling me what I can and can not do for my healthcare... at least not more than it already does...
Furthermore, if we don't do anything our children and grand children will pay far more than they would now. Our insurance premiums are going up by double digits annually! How much do you think they will be when it is time for your grand-kids to pay them?!
Something will be done before then... I just do not believe that the gvmt taking over and paying for everything is the right way to go.
As a matter of fact, we lost one contract to a French company because our costs were too high, partially relating to our higher health care costs for our employees. Don't you want our companies to be able to compete against French companies?
Yes... and they do... there was probably something else besides healthcare that lost the contract.... I can not see where someone said 'Well, we would have picked you except that your healthcare costs were to high, so we are going with the French company that has lower healthcare costs'. Your company could have been paying its CEO and top executives huge salaries... or had to many people... or who knows what...
BTW, it seems that Honda, Toyota, BMW etc. etc. thinks that it is not a big problem to pay the insurance and have their cars assembled here.. instead of Japan, Germany etc. (say, where are those French cars?)
Just because someone has access to health insurance, doesn't mean they can afford it as you are insinuating. A neighbor was laid off from his job about a year ago. With the job market tight, he saw this an opportunity to start his own business. Well, do you know why it didn't work? Health insurance for his own business would run a whopping $18,000 a year for him, his wife and four children. Insane! So, yes, I guess you are right when you stated that he had access to health insurance and thus we should not care about him. It is his own fault...
So he fits into the first of the uninsured... I pay $8,400 a year for my family... and have a $4,500 deductible policy... and yes, I think it is way to high... I still do not want my gvmt to spend 100s of billions.. when I do not know if my costs will go down or not....
I have read some of the postings on this thread trying to scare the rest of us as to what will happen if we adopt a Canadian like health insurance system. Who the heck says that we need to copy their system? Why can't we take a combination of the best from the US/the French/the Canadian etc?
OK, what are the best policies
I do not think it is single payer...
OHHH... and by the way.. to answer your first question... yes, I worked in England for a bit more than a year... fortunately for me I did not have to go through their system... but I heard some horror stories about it... and did you know that back in 2000, one of the biggest new company perks that was starting to come out in England was private insurance? Seems that some of the investment banks etc. were trying to lure people by providing them with 'better' health care..
And I will give you and example... My girlfriend came over to the US and got sick... I said let's go to the doctor as she had paid for travel insurance... she said she did not have the time to wait etc... Well, we called up, went in to see a doctor... he did the tests, gave prescriptions and we were out of there in a couple of hours... She said that in England she would have to have waited a couple of days... this is rationing of service which so far we do not have for a lot of people here..
Also, have you seen their teeth? A lot of people had bad teeth... I guess this is not covered over there...