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Somnabulist
Location: corner of No and Where
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Actually, national healthcare works not just in theory, but in fact - and far more efficiently than in the U.S. Try Switzerland, Germany, Canada, Japan, and the U.K. for example:
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The U.S. spends more than other countries on health care, both in absolute dollars and in the share of total economic activity. Health spending per capita in the U.S. was over $4,600 in 2000, more than twice the average of about $2,000 for the other industrial nations belonging to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Health spending in the U.S. was 13 percent of gross domestic product, compared with Switzerland (10.7%), Germany (10.6%), Canada (9.1%), Japan (7.8%), and the United Kingdom (7.3%). Although many might equate high expenditures with excellent medical treatment, the health of the average American, as measured by life expectancy and infant mortality, is below the average of other major industrialized nations. This is due to a variety of factors, including diet, physical activity levels, births to teenager mothers and deaths from violence.
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http://www.allhealth.org/sourcebook2002/ch8_8.html
The U.S. could save lots of money by switching to nationalized healthcare:
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ABSTRACT
Background A decade ago, the administrative costs of health care in the United States greatly exceeded those in Canada. We investigated whether the ascendancy of computerization, managed care, and the adoption of more businesslike approaches to health care have decreased administrative costs.
Methods For the United States and Canada, we calculated the administrative costs of health insurers, employers' health benefit programs, hospitals, practitioners' offices, nursing homes, and home care agencies in 1999. We analyzed published data, surveys of physicians, employment data, and detailed cost reports filed by hospitals, nursing homes, and home care agencies. In calculating the administrative share of health care spending, we excluded retail pharmacy sales and a few other categories for which data on administrative costs were unavailable. We used census surveys to explore trends over time in administrative employment in health care settings. Costs are reported in U.S. dollars.
Results In 1999, health administration costs totaled at least $294.3 billion in the United States, or $1,059 per capita, as compared with $307 per capita in Canada. After exclusions, administration accounted for 31.0 percent of health care expenditures in the United States and 16.7 percent of health care expenditures in Canada. Canada's national health insurance program had overhead of 1.3 percent; the overhead among Canada's private insurers was higher than that in the United States (13.2 percent vs. 11.7 percent). Providers' administrative costs were far lower in Canada.
Between 1969 and 1999, the share of the U.S. health care labor force accounted for by administrative workers grew from 18.2 percent to 27.3 percent. In Canada, it grew from 16.0 percent in 1971 to 19.1 percent in 1996. (Both nations' figures exclude insurance-industry personnel.)
Conclusions The gap between U.S. and Canadian spending on health care administration has grown to $752 per capita. A large sum might be saved in the United States if administrative costs could be trimmed by implementing a Canadian-style health care system.
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http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/short/349/8/768
I'm not saying we should jump immediately into a healthcare system exactly like any other country, or that those systems are not without problems. But socialized healthcare costs less, and provides more, on balance, than our godawful frankenstein of a health care system. We should probably try to find a way to get there while still providing access to private doctors/hospitals and encouraging new drug development.
P.S. Although that last point, drug development, would be solved if we simply forced Big Pharma to spend its advertising budget on research...
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