http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-09-25-universal-health-care_x.htm - Group: Americans want universal health care

Yet how do they vote?

If Americans wanted health care, wouldn't they just go out and buy it?

> wouldn't they just go out and buy it?

Yah, price a family where people have cronic conditions.

As long as your country is governed by corporate fascism, this is the best you can get ie you got money, you are treated, you dont\' have money, go shoot yourself.

This whole country is based on inequality. You are asking me? ask your fucking founding father the geartest bunch of douchbags of all human civilization.

> You are asking me?

Are you unsure?

Along with a free checkup, Americans want a free lunch and a free blow job. Preferably concurrently. It leaves more time for watching the Amazing Race.

So grandmas with cancer can just shove off, eh?

STFU.  Idiot.

> So grandmas with cancer can just shove off, eh?

Bombs don't pay for themselves you know.

Where do you want the money for grandma to come from?

The same place that highways, Predator drones, etc. come from (taxes).

What I find strange is that the US with a mostly private system already spends more per head on *public* health care than we do ($2051/head vs $1429) but has a lower life expectancy at birth (77.85yrs vs 78.54).

Sssh!! We have enough of them here as it is...

> Where do you want the money for grandma to come from?

We seem to have money for guns and bombs and nation building. Then we should have money for grandma too.

"If Americans wanted health care, wouldn't they just go out and buy it?" -- Ah, the "If they have no bread, let them eat cake" school of thought.

Although "a citizens group created by Congress" sounds like an oxymoron to me.  If it's "created by Congress", how can it be a "citizens group"?

Sounds like a "Congressionally selected/appointed group of people" to me.  Not a "group of concerned citizens that represent a cross-section of American public opinion".

Look not only do you have a lot of money for Grandma - you send more per head on Grandma than we spend per head on everybody. In fact you spend more per head on public healthcare than the famously profligate French.

Private healthcare spending per head
US:$2,580.00 (#1 natch)
UK:$335.00 (#21)

Public healthcare spending per head
US:$2,051.00 (#3 after Iceland & Germany)
UK:$1,429.00 (#16)

Figures from nationmaster where they have a load of stats on outcomes too. Predominantly private healthcare systems don't come out well.

that nationmaster site is awesome.

Yes, I think this comes from our unique American Schizophrenia. 

The Republicans believe that the Free Market will handle everything, so they keep trying to privatize medicine.  In the process, they create a whole layer of middle-men and even profit making companies, which suck lots of public dollars away from providing service into paying stock dividends for investors in those companies.

The Democrats believe that a safety net is needed, and that public administration of a safety net is a good thing.  The Republicans believe you can't trust Government to do anything, even as they run for control of that Government.  Maybe they don't trust that a Democratic Government can do anything.

The resulting tension -- Democrats trying to create an efficient, non-profit medical system and control costs -- then Republicans trying to privatize the results -- leads to the most wasteful situation of any country.  Paradoxical, isn't it?

The impression I get (rightly or wrongly) is that you have a principally private system with the resultant inefficiencies* and on top of that a public system with its brand of inefficiencies dedicated paying the bills. So you get clobbered twice.

*chiefly complex administrative structures and medical priorities influenced by either profit or avoiding legal action.

No, the problem is that people get treatment for things above and beyond what they would get in other countries.  I know someone receiving remicade treatments for Crohn's, and someone else on drugs to keep her brain cancer under control.  I am given to understand that they would both get lower-cost-and-for-them-less-effective treatment in countries with public health care.  Overall the results are better, but individuals with crazy cases come out worse.

And I recall hearing, though I don't have numbers to back this up, that most of our health care dollars go to these crazy cases.

So some rich people want to pay too much for a small amount of hope? no harm.  In fact, it's good for the rest of us as that drives medicine into new areas.

"What I find strange is that the US with a mostly private system already spends more per head on *public* health care "

It's not so strange. Part of the reason it will be very difficult to ever have any sort of system as this group wants are medical lobbyists.

It's much easier to pull the wool over the eyes of customers twice removed (customers->employers->insurance->healthcare) than it would be to do so if the customer were the government itself.