Your premise is wrong. Automobile loss insurance is not mandated. Automobile liability is mandated, for the sensible reason that a car is a deadly weapon that can cause huge damage to others.Okay, here's where I stand. I am definitely for healthcare for all. I don't care as much how it happens, but it seems silly to me that we, for example, find it perfectly acceptable to mandate car insurance, but not health insurance.
So it does with virtually everything -- housing, food, cable, phone, etc. People default on all kinds of debt -- but medical debt is not a large portion of those defaults, partly because there are state laws on how medical debt is treated which generally make paying it back very easy, and partly because people are often able to obtain charity privately or from Medicaid.so it does with healthcare
People don't like the idea of a gov't board deciding whether Grandma really needs that new hip or is going to die anyway, as Obama suggested.My point really is is what the heck is up with all the hoopla about rationing care for the terminally ill?
They don't, obviously. They just don't want the gov't making that call instead of you and your doctor.I also don't get the idea that the GOP doesn't think healthcare is a "right" that everyone should be entitled to, yet at the same time apparently believe that if someone does pay for insurance (no matter how cheap the plan) they are suddenly entitled to every medical weapon in humankind's arsenal no matter how dire an individuals situation or how unlikely the procedure is to help.
This is a point of factual confusion. The U.S. has, by far, the best medical care in the world. We have the best cancer survival rates (in some cases, 4 or 5 times better than socialized systems). We have 5 times more MRIs and other diagnostics per capita. We do twice as many organ transplants per capita as Europe. We have much shorter wait times for specialists, which in many cases saves lives.Neither do I get the idea that it is a crime to look at the health systems of countries which have a much higher satisfaction rate and much lower cost for clues on how we might be able to lower our own healthcare costs
Now much of that expense is marginal; e.g. nine of ten MRIs don't find a problem -- but that's why we have better outcomes: that tenth MRI finds early cancer or etc. Of course, in the end ALL health care is marginally useless; so far, everyone that was born has eventually died despite all medical care, and the outlook isn't good for those alive today.
We know why costs are lower in those countries: rationed care (which I've detailed above) and price controls. For services, price controls lead to shortages -- it is so hard to find specialists in socialist countries that in Canada they are awarded to patients by lottery, while in the UK people are pulling their own teeth out. As for drugs, price control is extremely unfair to America: we essentially pay for the R&D of every new drug developed anywhere in the world, and everyone else gets a free ride. But the alternative is that no one pays for new drugs, which will mean no new drugs. So, as with defense, America once again shoulders the world's burden.
Fortunately, we can afford to. Because we've embraced the free market, we are the richest group of 300 million people you can assemble using national borders. Hopefully, rather than making America poorer with more socialism, we can eventually get the rest of the world to join us in prosperity.
