10 Excellent Reasons for National Health Care

In August 2003, Drs. Woolhandler, Campbell and Himmelstein published a study of health-care administrative costs in the U.S. and Canada. They stated that administrative expenditures in the U.S. stood at 31 percent of overall health-care costs. A year later they wrote “only single-payer national health insurance could… allow universal coverage without any increase in total health spending.”
Montanans spent $4.9 billion on health care in 2003. If these authors are right, then Montanans paid over $1,600 in administrative costs for every man, woman and child in the state, including the uninsured. That means that only 69 cents of every dollar spent went to health care needs. Remember, administrative costs are passed on to patients, bill by bill, paycheck deduction by paycheck deduction, and even at the pharmacy!

Sources?

The U.S. already rations care. Rationing in U.S. health care is based on income: if you can afford care, you get it; if you can’t, you don’t. A recent study by the prestigious Institute of Medicine found that 18,000 Americans die every year because they don’t have health insurance. Many more skip treatments that their insurance company refuses to cover. That’s rationing. Other countries do not ration in this way.

http://www.pnhp.org/facts/singlepayer_faq.php#rationing

Its unfortunate that you have lost family members covered by the NHS but there are no guarantees that they would have survived in a private insurance environment.

When I asked you for sources I meant sourced academic level work not anecdotal stories. Anecdotes are useful but they do not always shed light on how to look for answers to solve problems.

If you factor in our 34-38% adminstrative costs for our system we are spending marginally more than the NHS and receiving comparatively worse quality of care. Do we really want a system where we have more billing clerks than nurses? Because that is what we currently have in the US.

No, it's not unfortunately, it's tragic. I'm sorry you like facts and figures so much. Did you even read the link I provided. I'm outta here. When you get your UHC and you're in your 70's and can't get any medical care we'll talk again.

there are no guarantees that they would have survived in a private insurance environment.

Only since you're so fond of the printed word.
http://www.liberty-page.com/issues/h...d.html#britain

I am British. My grandfather died after an MI, needing a CABG, he didn't qualify because he was retired and no longer paid taxes. 72 years old.

My aunt had ovarian cancer at age 68 and was only treated pallitively because there were younger woman who were in line ahead of her. She died.

My cousin had a toothache, needed a root canal, had to wait 6 weeks for her root canal, ended up with infection in the bone, even though she was on antibiotics. She died at age 38.

An uncle had afib. They refused to do an ablation on him because he was a smoker. He was in his 50's when he died.

These are a few examples from real life. I'll keep my private insurance Thank You.

In theory UHC sounds great, I don't mind helping pay for it, in reality it sucks.