The Free Market Sucks at Health Care

No industrialized western nation applies free-market principles to health care as vigorously as the US does.

What does it get us? Crummier care that's far too expensive.

When you measure US survival rates for cancer and heart surgeries it is among the highest in the world.

The real issue is that 5% of of the population consumes 39% of the bill & until we figure out how to handle that costs, will continue to grow. The US tries to prolong life as long as possible and spends billions prolonging life; long after other countries would have stopped

obamacare is modeled after Mass, whose plan is costing significantly more than budgeted and is bankrupting the state

Are you aware that a number of those countries' governments are bankrupt due to their social welfare programs notably the PIIIGS?
Portugal
Ireland
Iceland
Italy
Greece
Spain

The US also incurs high medical costs due to our social issues such as our habit of shooting each other, poor driving and drug addiction. And who wants to be treated in a turkish or mexican hospital?

Other important things to consider are availabilty of advanced diagnostic equiptment like CT scans, robotics and MRI's. The US has far more of such per capita. Also the U.S. produces far and away the most new drugs and equiptment for medical care.
Generally there is more good medicine in more places in the US than any other country with possible exceptions to such homogenous and small states like Denmark or Sweden.
Why do so many of those who can afford to come here for major health treatment?
The more health care becomes under the power of a central planning state the less effective it will be in our diverse circumstance. And the more power faceless bureaucrats have.
Read the recent questions the appeal judges asked the administration about O-care and the pathetic responses. 2000 pages of poorly crafted garbage.

It has been estimated that medicare/medicaid fraud could be as high as 25% which drives up the cost & it's proportion to GDP. Liability insurance is another factor in the cost

edited ..wrong thread...

The Obamacare program is far more fiscally responsible than the one it replaced...including the 1/2 trillion dollar unpaid for drug program instituted by the same people who criticize the new plan which is paid for.

Republicans promised to "repeal and replace" Obamacare with their own plan. But they have not offered a replacement...they have only offered a repeal which means we go right back to the same unfunded program they signed into law under Bush...the one that costs as much as Obama's plan but with no funding and coverage for 30 million fewer people. And out resident LVA conservatives are cheering them on all the way in the name of fiscal responsibility. Isn't it hilarious?

The image I linked earlier is much more readable via a direct link:

That graph.

The people of Massachusetts seem to like their now 5-year old reform.

A poll by the Harvard School of Public Health and The Boston Globe found that 63 percent of the residents supported the state reforms, up 10 percentage points from 2009. Only 21 percent opposed it. Support varied by party, with 77 percent of Democrats, 60 percent of independents and 40 percent of Republicans supporting the law.

An identical analogy would be "When you measure just diamonds and rubies, you conclude that rocks are super valuable."