- First, as a country we need to accept that health care is not something that can be given in unlimited amounts to everyone. A smart man named Say coined a concept now referred to Say's Law: it states that in some situations supply creates it's own demand. And that is exactly what happens with medical care. As a society we need to ration out medical care in a rational way. At the present one of those ways is to limit the number of emergency room slots available in major cities so that it is harder for the uninsured to use the emergency room as their primary deliverer of medical care. If we don't consciously limit the allocation of medical care we will inevidabley end up in situations where prices spin out of control or bad allocations of medical care are made. We have that situation in the United States right now. Prices rise because the demand is nearly limitless. Yet, some people without insurance can't get the kind of medical care they need without siting in an emergency room.
- The (relative to other countries) abundance of medical care - for the insured - in the United States does not mean better overall health. There was a study released in the Journal of the American Medical Association in May of 2006 and recapped in the New York Times a few days later. The study compared the health of British and Americans. It stated that "The United States spends more than twice as much per person on health care as Britain and yet, according to new data released today, older Americans are "much sicker" than their English counterparts". It went on to state "wealthier and better-educated people in both countries were much healthier than poorer and less-educated people. "Differences in socio-economic groups between the two groups were so great that those in the top education and income level in the U.S. had similar rates of diabetes and heart disease as those in the bottom education and income level in England." Later it stated "health insurance cannot be the central reason for the better health outcomes in England because the top socio-economic status tier of the U.S. population have close to universal access but their health outcomes are often worse than those of their English counterparts." http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/02/health/02cnd-health.html?ex=1304222400&en=3ccb7daab5e6c270&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
So, in my opinion it would be better to just get over the idea that we have a basically non-governmental medical system and start building a system that is rationally alocated between the government and private.
