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Originally Posted by dotti105
Last year we went to Australia and talked with many couples our age. They have nationalized health care and LOVE it. In their 50's many will also take out personal coverage, but non of them felt that they did not get treatment when needed or were denied the best of care.
They were all perplexed as to why our system is so screwed up and why nationalized health care is so controversial. They compared it to tax dollars paying for schools, police and fire protection. It was really eye opening.
I personally would much prefer a single payer system. I blame much of our problems on the insurance companies and The Afforadable Care Act puts too much control in the Insurance industry's hands as far as I am concerned.
Hopefully we can learn form all the other industrialized nations who have single payer systems and much better health outcomes. If you look at our outcomes it is very embarrassing. We could do so much better. But American pride does not allow us to learn from others, we have to design it ourselves and spend years figuring out why it isn't working right before we evolve to a system that will work. Most of us will be dead and gone by then I am afraid.
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Many years ago I saw a special report on TV about universal health care in France. It focused on a married couple who were both professionals with good incomes. They liked universal health care but admitted that their taxes were so high that they had little money left over. They didn't own their own home and lived in a small appartment. This was a long time ago, and, if I remember correctly, they paid something like a 60% tax rate.
About 10 years ago I did some online research to find out about health care in Canada. I found out what the population was at that time and then I found out what their national health care bill was. It came to something like $8,000. per person but not everyone pays for health care. Anyway, it's very difficult to figure out exactly what's going on. Some people pay a lot and some pay nothing. If you happen to ask those who get it for free, of course they will say they LOVE it. But if you ask those who are paying a large chunk of their income, it's likely you will get a different answer. So it all depends on who you ask.