I'm bored, and kinda amazed that a topic hasn't been started and furiously debated on this. I've mainly ignored the grand spectacles of the summer and their slow fizzling-out. I realize also that any comparison to Canadian healthcare is dubious: the U.S. has banked so much of its economy on healthcare that any improvement to its miserable system might bring disastrous effects if it is disassembled. But it is still garbage healthcare.

I've been sick for the past 5 days and had to go to a hospital, got shackled with deductibles on top of obscene insurance costs, and got crappy medical attention in glamorous settings. The American system might be great if you need a triple bypass. But it is positively atrocious for basic day-to-day care and simple emergency room visits.

I'm not sure if a "public option", as opposed to a proper single-payer system, would improve basic healthcare delivery. I don't actually know much of what is being proposed, primarily since you can't read an article without some pixie from a right-wing think tank spouting fairy tales about how atrocious nationalized healthcare is and decrying government-paid healthcare as infested with Hannibal Lector clones.

So, in short, what is your ideal healthcare solution for the United States, and why? (Edit: note that I'm not necessarily talking about the callousness of not providing a significant chunk of the population with any healthcare coverage at all. I'm saying that the service for those with good insurance is still bad. Though obviously the former should be a (the?) primary factor in discussing reforms to this system).

I'll take whatever Canada's got.

Since that's impossible because our government is a bought and paid for subsidiary of Whore Corp, the nascent 'public option' will do.

Private insurance works great for healthy people & rich people- everybody else needs a fallback position, which is what a 'public option' will ideally provide.

We'll see what kind of Frankenstein monster we end up with, though.

when i get sick i just go across to nuevo laredo.....the doctor checks you, tells you whats wrong, and gives you meds or shots depending on what you need.all for like maybe 40 bucks at the most..i mean i wouldnt go over there for an operation but for day to day care i do...

I don't really know what will work, but my biggest problem is with insurance companies that we pay every month and when we need something they find a way not to pay.

If I pay for medical insurance or get it through work I should never see a doctor bill.

My rambling take (after several Crown/sevens):

1.) Follow the money. We don't really manufacture anything anymore, and health care is a huge part of the GDP of this country. If we maintain status quo, imagine how that number will go up as the Baby Boomers continue to require urgent care, hospitalization and medication. The money in the pig trough is too great to bring about profound change to a broken system.

2.) Obama and the Dems shit the bed by failing to define health care reform as a moral issue. For decades, the dems allowed the Lee Atwater morality playbook to kick them right in the balls. This was the one time that they should have pulled out every dying mother, child, grandma, that was denied coverage and booked them on every talk show, and plastered their images on every Web site. I think they figured it out eventually, but failed to find that one sad nightmare pre-existing condition denial story to become the face of healthcare.



3.) They also should have started the negotiation point at a single-payer system, and gone from there.

At this point, even a watered down version with a public option trigger is better than nothing. It moves the ball in the right direction. The option out clause, really isn't an issue. No state will opt out, especially poor Southern States. The rhetoric from the governors, and Congressmen from these states will be "We'll opt out blah blah blah." But much like the Medicare rhetoric before it, that won't happen.

Is there a country (not one with two and a half million people, a bigger one) who has a healthcare system which is efficient, fair and affordable? Health care reforms have been debated heavily for the past decade over here as well, they're not getting shit done as well because it's just a very unpopular issue.

Our system is fair but that's where it stops. Way too unefficient due to overflowing bureaucracy and way too costly due to mainly the same reasons.

edit, double post