First, for the money we in the U.S. pay for health care, the performance of the system is very, very poor v. other countries (I’m not going to site the studies here, but can if someone wants them). We simply have one of the lowest value health care systems in the world!

Second, the more people we have in our population who don’t get proper attention to infectious disease because they can’t afford health care, the greater the chance that we’ll have serious outbreaks of some kind. Thus, we’re actually further down in the value equation than we think because we are increasing our risks of both deadly outbreaks, and in ‘creating’ new strains of disease.

Third, why is it logical to have our health insurance through our employer? It’s odd to me that it’s considered a ‘benefit’ when many of our policy makers assume it as a given. And, anyone who has ever shopped for healthcare insurance for personal use, or for a company knows what a nightmare the options are.

Fourth, if we all pay into a system, it might be possible to use this large amount of money to change some thinking regarding the behaviors that lead us into long-term health problems like obesity. What if the FDA revised its food pyramid to reduce our health costs instead of increasing the profits of the food industry firms and their lobbyists?

There is no question that this is a sticky wicket. One option might be to have national health-care insurance, and everyone can choose the level of service that they pay for

Regardless, the current system is broken. Needs to be fixed now.

Money was never good under the HMO incentive concept. Government can’t run a program to save their ass. Look at Walter Reed Military Hospital as an example.

John McCain sees health insurance as a taxable revenue stram. Barack Obama says he has a better plan, but I guess I am not smart enough to understand how it will work, yet.

It seems to me that a country like the US ought to be able to develop a fairly decent national system of basic coverage, which then could be augmented at various levels of coverage or service by the traditioal funders of today: employers, private indviduals, or in some cases, labor organizations.

Don’t get me started on what some well known large employers might start to do would probably decide to do.

However, the sad reality is that goevernment is more likely to come up with solutions like they did for large joint multi-employer pension plans (think Jimmy Hoffa/Central States Pension Fund, which is perpetually underfunded) than they are to come up with a well-managed, efficient national health care program.

I am feeling very cynical about our elected government this week.

– Michael VanDervort

From experience on the employer side, in Canada, offering full supplemental health care was incredibly inexpensive, compared to the US.

I can’t imagine the US would ever move to nationalized care completely. It doesn’t fit with our economic system for one, and second, I imagine private medical “clubs” would be created for those willing to pay. (This started happening in Canada a few years ago. ~$3000 per year for access to a private clinic.)

I don’t think there is an easy or clear-cut answer, but having a combination of both, while maybe not the ideal, at least keeps those with nothing able to receive some medical care.

I’m looking forward to seeing more responses. This is a great question/debate.

-Melina