Why Don’t Americans Live Longer? short answer: no universal healthcare

[StarBob]

God Stern... you single handedly make me not even want to be on this forum. You just pick things apart and use little quips and weak examples to disprove a point that wasn't even being made to begin with. You never take anything as a whole, you just take what you think you can make a post about and pretend it matters to anyone but yourself. You do it on every damn post in a thread that doesn't repeat what you do verbatim. What's the point? No one will agree with you on everything. You can't possible do enough wikipedia research to counter everything that's not SternSpeak.

Just continue to rip apart everything people say into little blocks of quote and pretend you're arguing to change the world into your personal utopia. Maybe one day you'll realize that people on HL2.NET don't make change anything and this isn't the ****ing National Debate Tournament.

 

[CptStern]

you know if you couldnt respond to my points you could have just said so, sheesh

<runs>



I'm mostly being tongue in cheek no offense intended

 

[Sparta]

If I really thought universal healthcare could be done right and efficiently, I would be more accepting. From what I have seen, it can't be done right.

What makes you think it can't be done right? Australia has both private and public options and far less problems (and cost) with its healthcare system than the U.S. does. The same goes for Canada, the U.K., basically every country that uses a universal health care has healthier citizens who pay less for health care than the U.S. does. Even if it's not perfect (which I don't believe any bureaucratic system created by man ever will be), it is dramatically better than what you have now, so why not at least attempt it?

I favor a series of well enforced and fair regulations to keep prices down while maximizing competition between providers and pharmaceutical companies. decrease the cost of malpractice insurance, and stop Big Pharma from advertising to the general public.

Its about finding the right balance between limiting regulation by the government and allowing the free market to compete and develop.

This is one of the reasons Australia has both private and public options. It allows for healthy competition and also allows for its citizens to afford healthcare without having to sell off any of their possessions.

A lot of those regulations you're for, they are regulations these UHC countries have in place (with the exception of tort reform, but that might be because America just seems to be more litigious than other countries) were brought up by some Democrats and Independents during the crafting of the healthcare bill that passed last year. Most of them were shot down because they were deemed 'socialist' by Republicans, who were very much in the pocket of insurance companies, while the pharmaceutical industry bought out the Democrats with 150 million dollars as long as they wouldn't introduce anything that would attempt to control and reduce drug prices in the bill.