Mns wrote:
How about there are 100 people that need the drug and only 60 people have it covered by their insurance and the other 40 can't afford it. What happens then?
Oh, right, they die.
While universal coverage is necessary the issue is not nearly as black and white as you make it out to be.
Human wants are unlimited but material wants are limited. If universal coverage meant you could just bill any procedure, totally at discretion, the real winners wouldn't be the sick, but medical super-specialists and drug firms that would do in the field of medicine what they currently do in the field of military hardware.
It's not quite as simple as "how much money you throw at insurance companies". The driving force in ballooning medical costs is not insurance companies but service providers and pharmaceutical firms. Insurance companies aren't guilty of driving prices up, they're guilty of treading on patients and not specialist physicians and pharmaceutical firms - denying care rather than challenging the powerful interests that drive costs up.
Mns wrote:
There's rationing in this country. Instead of everyone being on the same playing field, however, it all matters how much money you throw at insurance companies (and if they can't find some sort of loophole to kick you off of your plan the moment you get sick).
When you say stuff like this you go from making a legitimate argument for universal care to spouting socialist propaganda. Paying money for things is a less-than-level playing field? Paying for things is "rationing"?
Currency is a means of rationing? Wut?
FLASH OF THE BLINDINGLY OBVIOUS
My point is, rather than saying "everything should be free" and calling it a day, you really need to examine the much more difficult question as to how laws ought to work such that everyone gets a fair shake. For one thing, "kicking people off the plan as soon as they get sick" has been illegal for quite a while. Still happens, of course. But then if we go to a public system, how do you incentivize physicians to treat people they don't want to treat - black people, at-risk people, people with AIDS, etc?