06-05-2008, 12:11 AM
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Banned
Contributor
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Join Date: Jun 2008
Posts: 113
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Health Care---Just the facts!
These capitalist countries don't trust health care entirely to the free market.
Quote:
Sen. JOHN MCCAIN (AZ), Republican Presidential Candidate: The solution, my friends, isn't a one-size-fits-all big government takeover of health care.
T.R. REID: What I've found is that it's not all "socialized medicine" out there. Many countries provide universal coverage with private insurance, private doctors, private hospitals, using market ideas that might work for us.
But here's the thing. These capitalist countries don't trust health care entirely to the free market. They all impose limits.
There are three big ones. First, insurance companies must accept everyone and can't make a profit on basic care. Second, everybody's mandated to buy insurance, and the government pays the premium for the poor. Third, doctors and hospitals have to accept one standard set of fixed prices.
Can Americans accept ideas like that?
Well, the fact is these foreign health care ideas aren't really so foreign to us. For American veterans, health care is just like Britain's NHS. For seniors on Medicare, we're Taiwan. For working Americans with insurance, we're Germany. And for the tens of million without health insurance, we're just another poor country.
But almost all of us can agree that this fragmented health care mess cannot be ignored. The longer we leave it, the sicker it becomes, and the more expensive the cure.
SICK AROUND THE WORLD
PRODUCED AND DIRECTED BY
Jon Palfreman
WRITTEN BY
Jon Palfreman and T.R. Reid
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