Democratic Primaries
In reply to the discussion: Biden:' 'He's been talking about Medicare for all for 35 years. Nothing's happened..' [View all]Blue_true
(31,261 posts)Except for Britain and Canada, countries that have social healthcare have small populations, and there are medical procedures that are not covered. Those countries also have citizens that practice better health maintenance than ours do.
Our country is diverse, with people that are health conscious and as a result avoid hospitalization, and people that on a daily basis don't give much attention to their health.
In my area of my state, obesity is a massive problem. The cost of extensive healthcare for people that develop heart and vascular problems due to being grossly overweight will overwhelm a system, it will take multiples of people practicing good health maintenance to counteract the impact on the system on one person who is not.
Lastly, Europe's healthcare systems were started up during rebuild from World Wars, WWI for some, WWII for others. We have had only one war in our history as a nation (after we formed) where a large amount of our landmass was devastated by war, so our ability to do healthcare as part of a rebuild didn't happen, our rebuild focused on the intercontinental rail system and landgrant colleges, both of which have been massive economic engines for the nation.
I don't believe we will see MFA as Sanders and Warren are proposing. What we can do is something like Canada did, except allow states to form multi-state healthcare compacts and dictate the conditions for health insurance companies that sell there, as well as negotiate drug prices or buy drugs from Canada or Mexico.
California is looking into an interesting concept, setting up it's own drug company to make generic drugs. The only issue that I have with that is California going it alone instead of pulling in states like Oregon, Washington and Colorado to join in the effort. The same group of states could even set up their own full coverage healthcare system (that would be similar to Canada, where some provinces chose to go forward with healthcare reform instead of waiting for recalcitrant provinces).
primary today, I would vote for: Joe Biden