I think we're getting it wrong when we try to say we want Britain or Canada's system, there's a better argument to be made. Here it is.
So here's the deal. We look to the north and see a pretty strong single payer system. What we call Medicare for All. It's what all or most Progressives want. And someday we'll get to that point. The liberals in this country have a profound way of leaking ideas into the public and, over time, making progress on them if not fully implementing them. The reason I say we should look at it differently though, is because there is a better system that we should be looking at. Japan.
Let me tell you why Japan. It's the second largest economy(after ours) and the population density is relative, in my opinion to make a strong point....and burn down all the opposition to the lies from the opposition.
First, the cost. Remembering that one of the arguments made is that providing universal healthcare is going to cost too much, I think we should also take the focus away from standing programs in our country like Medicare for a moment and look at how a fully set up system works. The only real reason Medicare comes into trouble is because it's under funded. Older people tend to cost more from sickness and natural aging ills but there's no low-risk people in the pool. Insurance Companies keep their profit margins so high for excluding the sick and we should argue that adding more healthy people to the system, which in turn would increase the revenue replacing premiums with taxes to Medicare, would embolden they system by adding more "paying customers" that wouldn't need it as much care as their elder counter parts spreading the pool to more security. It's as basic as that. It cost an average of $7290 per capita in America in 2007, but Japan only paid roughly $2581.
We already insure the sickest, or most likely to be injured through our social programs, but a sick person not in the military or over 65 will only go to the hospital when they need it the most, and from a fiscal standpoint, when it costs the most adding to the expense we incur as a whole but without the easy payment fix. So the bills eventually build go unpaid, and go to everyone else. Heavy chemotherapy to try to eradicate a disease that could have been prevented by catching it early if they could have had a check-up. The doctor could have prescribed medication or had them on a diet regimen(I'm not a doctor, but you get the idea) and that, for most, would have been the end of it. In Japan, on the other hand(which by the way also beats down the rationing argument for the most part), the people go to see a doctor 15, yes, 15 times a year! And the wait times are so low that they don't even bother to make an appointment. So they can catch the disease early. They have twice as many MRI machines as we do, twice and many x-ray machines and the percent of people who die from preventable illness would put us to shame. And it still costs less. It is a shame.
As a side note, I'm sick of hearing that we have the best technology for medicine in the world because most of the drugs and machines we use are products of other countries(England, Switzerland, Etc.). And the ones we do have wouldn't exist without the government subsidies to private companies to invest. Yes, keep the government out of medicine. The "free" market spurs innovation.....as long as the government is funding the research and companies are waiting to buy it, sell it, undercut the quality of the design and overcharge for it. And worst of all, what does all the technology in the world mean to someone who can't use it? What does a mammogram machine mean to an uninsured woman, who may or may not have breast cancer, if she cant' get regular checkups?
Japans hospitals are beautiful too. They look like hotels outside of the medical treatment areas. Dining areas, real beds, real food, the works. And, if people had the money to pay up front it would cost less to fly over there, get treatment in one of these places and fly back for what we pay here. Look it up(really). And that's even considering you would have to pay hospital bills because you're not a citizen.
I bring this all up because we say we want Canada's healthcare system, and a fine one it is, but we live in a much larger and broader economy than our friends from the north do. We can even out-do Japan if we take our heads out of our "you know where" and get it done. The conservatives are going to fight tooth and nail against us, but we can do it. 60% of the population wanting it is enough to fight for in my eyes.
Last thing, and this is my opinion, I don't think the conservatives are fighting universal healthcare because of special interests. That's part of it, but I believe there is something even deeper. Ever since the radical "Neo-con" movement took over the GOP, they have been trying to get rid of the social safety nets(Social Security, Medicare, etc.), and they know that if they lose the battle to let people know that the government can do it's job and provide for the people, they lose. They've built and image on small government and taxes and Reaganomics, even though time and time again it's been proven that when taxes were higher(smartly) there was more even prosperity throughout the country, and if they lose that, they have nothing to run on. They can't stoke up fear of a government that is providing for the people. So the next time you hear an argument from the conservative movement, know how pathetic it is because you know it's just a last ditch attempt of the failed experiment of anti-populist anguish and disparity to turn our country into, as Michael Moore so eloquently put it, "A big pyramid scheme"