Below is a response to a Facebook thread. I ran out of space in my comment on Facebook, so I went to a place where I am free to write as much as I want. :) The original thread is here and it references an article from the Washington Post here.
Now, without further adieu, my ramblings:
Small industrialized nations? The article references Japan, Germany, France, Britain which are the Nos. 2, 4, 5, and 6 overall in GDP around the world.
Why does our larger land area affect anything? The hospitals are already in place all over the country. We're just trying to figure out how to pay the doctors.
The fact is that the health insurance industry in this country is woefully inefficient. Around 20 cents of every dollar paid in premiums does not go towards paying medical expenses. That's huge -- the article mentions that other countries are able to get that number between 1.5 and 2. Our insurance industry employs armies of "adjusters" whose job it is to deny claims based on technicalities and loopholes. In other countries, where insurance companies are required to pay claims submitted by doctors, those adjusters are not necessary. By properly regulating the insurance industry, we could eliminate that substantial cost. However, if the insurance companies have to pay every claim, obviously we need to lower our medical costs as well. Perhaps we can't get them as low as Japan (who spends less than half per capita than us), but, as the article's MRI example illustrates, there is no reason we can't implement $98 MRIs here too.
It is a myth that government is inherently more bloated than private industry. Governments all over the world are able to provide insurance at a tiny fraction of the cost that our private industry provides here. Indeed, our own government provides cheaper insurance than the private companies with Medicare. The Democrats' plan (among other things) essentially proposes to expand Medicare to the whole population (the "public option"). The private companies will be forced to compete, but that's a good thing as far as I'm concerned. They're an oligopoly, so there's hardly any competition now.
But that's the plan that's on the table. Frankly, I don't think it goes far enough. Sadly, it is debatable whether even this timid plan is politically feasible. In an ideal world, we would have a single-payer system. (e.g. Medicare for all; no private insurers)
In my opinion profits made from health insurance are inherently immoral. They are literally profiting from the medical expenses of American citizens. Furthermore, they increase their profits by denying the claims of their paying customers.
Shared risk -- that's all insurance is. Why does that need to be a multi-billion dollar, for-profit business? What's wrong with the government handling that job? Clearly, it is capable of it (Medicare). The people who deserve to make money in the medical industry are the doctors and the drug companies. That's where the innovation and talent is. What does the insurance industry bring to the table? As far as I can tell, they perform a task that is better suited for the government while profiting substantially and denying millions of Americans access to health care.
This country isn't so different from the rest of the world that we are the only ones that can't have universal health care. It would certainly cut into the profits of drug and insurance companies, but it would prevent people like Kelly from owing Baylor Hospital tens of thousands of dollars for a 10-day hospital stay. If they had been on vacation in London when Lilly got sick, they would have gotten the same care and they wouldn't owe a dime.
Americans citizens are sick without access to doctors. They can't afford their prescription drugs. They hesitate before going to the emergency room because they're scared it might bankrupt them. Who are we? No other industrialized country does this to its citizens. If anything, we have a moral obligation to fix this problem, and the only thing standing in our way is the entrenched, super-wealthy health insurance industry which is the beneficiary of our misfortune.
