I support publicly funded healthcare options...but to be fair, the U.S. system is certainly not "free market healthcare". I suspect it would function somewhat more efficiently if it were.
Good point. Of course it is difficult to make people shop around at different hospitals for lowest price on hip replacement surgery. There are measures that can be taken to incentive market competition but the discussion is not one some want to have, especially those who think the healthcare silver bullet is Single Payer and once that is in place, there will never be anymore problems with healthcare.
How much do smoking and obesity fit into those numbers of life expectancy? I think our problems on that are do to lifestyle and "Abundance" ie, over-eating, lack of excercise (too many tv's, computers and video games) then it is about a falty appropriation of health care resources.
And as was pointed out, there are different standards of what counts towards the infant mortality in Cuba versus the US.
What free market? The Federal gov't has exempted insurers from anti-trust lawsuits, they have closed off interstate competition, they have let the trial lawyers sue up the joint so horrible scum like John Edwards can become rich politicians and commit adultery while the poor wife dies of cancer, the gov't has stepped in and done partial reforms to appease a special interest group whether it be AARP or the insurance industry to the detriment of the overal cost of health care, they have passed mandate after mandate at all levels to the point that 60 year old woman have to be covered for prenatal care, and have done nothing to try and encourage price shopping for at the very least elective surgery when prices can differ by as much as 10% from hospital to hospital.
And for all these studies that claim that we spend more on healthcare per person then any other countries, do these studies include elective plastic surgery? Do they include other things like the fact that we do most of the medical research in the world, essentially subsidizing those "wonderful" systems in Britain, France and Canada? Do they account for the fact that we educate most of the worlds doctors (no I am not saying Europe doesn't produce some damn good doctors)? I am saying the studies conveniently lie to suit their purposes. They do not account for Americas unique place in the world of healthcare.
Are there people that can't afford healthcare in America? Yes. Does that mean our system is so much worse that we need to scuttle whats good just out of fairness even if it doesn't solve the real problems and in fact makes them worse? Absolutely no.
I don't care what the politicians are willing to support, but as a Conservative we are all for reforming health care, however, we don't think your solutions will work and in fact we thing your solutions will make the problem worse because they deny reality. Obama's HCR never even addressed the fact that biggest and most growing problem is the dropping of medicaid and medicare patients by doctors, but it did add 18 million more people to the rolls and it did cut reimbursement rates so the numbers look good when they come out of the all mighty CBO. So that problem will not stop but will get worse. Its like a I told Snowguy, you will have a huge health care reform in place, but it will be worthless as there won't be any doctors who will take it. "Are you seriously saying that all the doctors will leave the field and no one will become doctors?" I love this leftist hyperbole of conservative arguements, its kind of like "the oil will still be there when the moratium ends". Of course the oil will be there, but the machinery won't. It will be in Cuba, in Nigeria, in Saudi Arabia. As for doctors, you will have people avoid the debt it takes to become a specialist when the there is no chance to get ahead because the pay has declined. And even a miniscule 5% or 2% decline in the number of doctors will be a significant problem when you are adding millions of new patients.
