I find that so long as a simple majority of Americans can be convinced that the short-straw will go to Some Other Poor Slob (TM), then the graspy arguments on cost will continue to hold disproportionate weight in the electorate's mind. I can only hope that more people recognize that a profit-motive is as much an instrument of waste (you know, the profit that would otherwise go to care) as it is of efficiency.

Edited at 2009-07-25 01:37 am (UTC)

Which is why I'm hoping, somewhere in the foreseeable future, to install myself in Europe.

I'm a US born woman living in the UK for the past 13 years and I praise the NHS to the skies! I've had better preventative healthcare here and it's wonderful not to worry about the cost to see a doctor or go to a hospital. In the US, even when I had insurance, I had to pay $500 out of my pocket before the insurance kicked in. At that time of my life, that $500 was my weekly paycheque, so if I got ill, I probably couldn't pay my rent that month or my utilities. To add to that, most employers in the US allow you 5 sickdays a year, so if you are quite ill, you get 5 days paid and the rest you get no pay.

A friend of mine who had breast cancer stayed at a job where she was bullied just to have healthcare and when she got the all clear after a double masectomy, chemo and reconstruction, finally quit the job due to the stress. This was 10 years ago, and she has been unable to get insurance since. For 2 years she lived in a homeless shelter and at least got helthcare via the government for free.

Another friend, a musician-they normally have no insurance-developed a disease that was slowly killing him. Hospital treatment was stupid money. His parents offered to sell their house to help pay for a portion of the costs. He committed suicide rather than put his parents through this.

I had to go to hospital in the early 90s with pneumonia. Even with insurance and a shared room, the cost to be there 4 days was just under $7000, and this didn't include the cost of the prescriptions I needed when I got out. I wasn't supposed to go back to work for a few weeks, but ended up doing so simply because I had no sickdays left and if I didn't go, the bills wouldn't get paid. At that time, people could smoke indoors and my boss was a chainsmoker. Use upir imagination for the rest.

I have many more examples at how bad the US healthcare system is now and am very frustrated to hear the Republicans rant about getting NHS-style medicine is like becoming a "commie" or, shock-horror, "a socialist"! They obviously have never experienced what millions of Americans go through daily.