Won't the people with means still be able to pay for the care they want? I don't see how they'd see any trade-offs, except potentially in higher taxes?

hey...send your patient with the brain tumor here to albany. i'll do it for free. i have performed a complete brain-ectomy so i feel pretty confident removing just a small piece.

Most European nations have some sort of universal healthcare system which isn't useless, but isn't as good as healthcare in the US. I'm inclined to believe the bureaucracy of a nation-wide healthcare system in a country our size would be pretty horrible.

Even smaller state-wide systems, such as the one Mitt Romney created in Massachusetts by state mandate are struggling because of government tinkering and control (adding additional services, removing others, uninformed and special interest lobbied politicians arguing about it in session), leading to growing costs.

Universal healthcare would be another "entitlement" spending program, along with Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, the costs of which are growing at a faster rate than our economy. Suffice it to say that those three programs already account for half of the federal budget in 2006 (compared with military/defense <20%), and the baby boomers have only begun to retire.

As mentioned before, the case studies of universal healthcare (a la Clinton) is that from Europe, Canada, or the middle east. In simple terms, they do work; however, there appears to be several main drawbacks...(1) they have income tax rates in general above 45% and in some cases as high as 70%; (2) they don't have as much disparity in income levels as here, such as the huge influx of lower income immigrants meaning those with money would be forced to foot the bill more - I'd be okay with this, except for the fact that government seems to think that anyone with over 80k is wealthy and has disposable income to throw around (try paying for 2.5 kids to go to college and buy a house in any urban city outside the south); (3) you don't get to choose your doctors in many countries, rather you get assigned one by the gov't unless you want to pay extra for the ultra pricey private clinics; (4) the waiting list for procedures and what we would consider "routine" exams stretch weeks to months arguably putting patients at higher risk; (5) doctors get paid less, generally <$120k even for surgeons. Difference is, medical school is paid for by the state in most European countries. No one has talked about doing that here, and my guess is that they won't until they realize that people can't afford medical school anymore (and therefore are going into other careers) until it becomes a national crisis; (6) this country has a major issue with malpractice and people "gaming" the system, which you don't see in other countries. This is a huge cost that adds to the price of medical services, and its hard to reduce cost until you deal with that component of it.

No our system isn't perfect, and it needs changing. I'm not convinced that universal health care is the answer unless we think we can do a better job than the Europeans...given the self-serving clowns in Congress, I'd say our chances of that are <.01%. Besides, we all know that government tends to screw things up of this scale and proportion. And as they all say, the proof is in the pudding...where do people in Europe, Canada, or the middle east go when they need something serious take care of (provided they have the $$)? The good ol' USA.

www.barackobama.com