[Professor S]

I am by no means orthodox in this area, but I am not surprisingly against public healthcare as the main source of healthcare for Americans, although I do support it as a backstop for those who have limited access. I've also written on this subject more than a couple times due to my experiences with public healthcare and it's mistreatment of my father in law, so I've exhausted most of my details on this matter.

Instead of rehashing ideas listed above, I'll try and simplify a few of my thoughts on this:

1) The current single payer proposal asks healthcare companies to reduce costs associated with healthcare. At the same time the goal is to add a supposed 40 million people on to healthcare benefit plans. IMO this will inevitably lead to a reduction in services or rationing them (basic mathematics). I know that part of the control is intended to help reduce waste and such, but see my comments below.

2) While government can be good at regulating and policing private bodies, it's always been proven to be woefully inadequate at RUNNING anything. Waste, quotas, corruption and politics tend to make decisions instead of professionals (see public education for an example). I've always found it curious that every public societal function that is controlled by the government is continually and unendingly ridiculed, yet the answer to all of this criticism is "make it bigger/throw more money at it".

3) While single payer systems are quite good at general health maintenance, they are HORRIBLE at providing specialist care and often deny service to those who need it (rationing) due to age, current health issues, lifestyle, etc. Manasecret cited several horror stories of American healthcare, and I'm sure there are many more, and I could cite just as many horror stories of people being denied care or dying while waiting for a specialist. There will always be these stories no matter who is in charge, and I don't see them getting any less frequent if the provider of halthcare gets larger and even more topheavy and impersonal.

4) We have to think about the insurance costs and how they are involved in all of this. Malpractice insurance is so high due to lawsuits and exorbinate payouts. Tort reform has to be part of this conversation or else much of our tax money for healthcare will be going into the pockets of lawyers when we think it's going towards service.

5) Before scrapping the American way of providing healthcare, we need to think about how that will affect the world's healthcare. America is currently the leader in creating and providing the highest level of individual healthare in the world. We are the home bases for international pharmacutical companies and when someone wants the best doctor in the world in any one particular area, they come to the US. These pharm companies and doctors created the latest and most innovative techniques, drugs and medical equipment in the world, which is then used by the rest of the world. To essentially castrate the center of medical innovation the world over could have disasterous effects on world health, not just American health.

6) Logistics need to be a part of this discussion. We're not talking about socializing the healthcare of th small country. We're talking about socializing the healthcare of the better part of 400 million people.

I'm not one to say hat the American healthcare system is perfect, it's absolutely not perfect... but nothing is. We keep pushing forward with these radical ideas with no real thought towards unintended consequences all because there are flaws in what we deem should be perfect.

We need to keep what makes American healthcare great for the best of us, and work to improve it for the rest of us.

Most importantly, we can't this become a means of controlling human behavior. Single payer options could quickly become a means for legitimizing intolerance and Big Brother like mandates in the name of the "greater good".