Quote: (05-23-2014 03:52 PM)speakeasy Wrote:
Quote: (05-23-2014 03:35 PM)SheWantsTheD Wrote:
Quote: (05-23-2014 03:30 PM)speakeasy Wrote:
Yes. It's not perfect but I think it's a step in the right direction. Ideally I'd prefer we had single-payer healthcare like every other industrial nation in the world. It makes the most sense to me. There's a reason that the healthcare lobby is single most powerful lobby in Washington(right up there with Big Oil). It's immensely profitable. Canadians and Europeans pay way less for the exact same drugs that we have here. The Pharmaceutical lobby here is powerful and fight any price controls on drug costs. They can stop Americans from importing drugs for cheap from Canada so that you will be forced to buy the expensive drugs here. People usually argue that the private sector is more efficient than the public sector, but I don't think our private healthcare system is efficient compared to other industrial countries. We pay more and the end results are actually less. It's also overly complicated as I found out when I needed a surgery last year.
I have no idea Americans are so unique in their opposition to universal coverage. This mystifies my friends overseas. Everywhere else it's seen as the right thing to do, like giving an education to a kid. But here, it's seen as Communism. Maybe if we never had the Cold War, attitudes would be different. I think being in an arms race with the USSR for half a century made Americans paranoid about anything that smacks of socialism in practice or rhetoric and that Cold War mindset has become imprinted in the cultural DNA. Obama's a communist! Obamacare is communist! Raising taxes on the rich is communist!!! Lifting the embargo in Cuba is communist!!!
Do you actually trust this government to manage your healthcare? If you do, you are surely not seeing this government for what it truly is.
Also, where were a lot of those drugs that are cheap in Canada and Europe developed? Would we have as many drugs today without the incentive for monetary rewards?
Drugs are developed outside the US as well. Germany and Switzerland are prolific in drug patents as well.
Sure they are, but don't dismiss the amount of free-market benefits America makes to the rest of the world through innovation. Healthcare especially.