Quote Originally Posted by VanChilds View Post
Kirk if I am following you, than the overall price of medical care won't really fall so I our brightest minds will still spend 8-12 years in school so that deals with one of my concerns. Will we have health care rationing though? I don't really want the federal govt telling people when and what type of health care they can receive. I also feel that an "everyone pays the same, everyone gets the same" program takes personal accountability out of the equation. If I don't use tobacco, drink heavily, use drugs or have multiple sex partners and I eat a balanced diet and exercise why should I have to pay the same as someone who isn't as healthy? I don't think there is any question that the insurance companies are the issue and we need to dramatically decrease the cost of health care. I think there has to be a middle ground between the system we have and a single payer system
Healthcare costs would fall by 30% if you cut out the huge bureauocracy that runs the system now and created one national single payer system. Doctors will still get paid the market price for their work, nobody would see any change to their healthcare apart from less form filling and no denial of coverage. Uninsured/unhealthy peoples' healthcare is already paid for by insured active healthy people, it would just get much cheaper to pay for with this system. Most of the things you hear about how a single payer system is one step from socialism are not true. It just means that a buyer representing 300 million people negotiates costs and benefits for everyone versus one guy/firm trying to buy individual healthcare for himself/employees. This makes everything much cheaper. The single payer then aggregates those costs and divides by 300 million without adding another layer of profit. It's not entirely fair on healthy versus unhealthy people although if a healthy person is in a car wreck or gets some disabling disease and needs decade of healthcare then they're going to get it and not have to worry about denial of coverage etc. so it's all good in the end and much cheaper than the current system. For a few years now CEO's like GM's CEO have been calling for such a system because the US system makes building cars in America versus abroad uncompetitive. America spends vast quantities more per person than other countries for often crappier results.