Probably healthcare deserves its own thread. It is a complex and important topic.
We should admit to a few right up front if we truly want to have an honest debate about our current system.
First, the absurd notion that the US has "poorer" outcomes than other developed countries. This is patently false. Every time someone quotes this it is based on the WHO study from 2000 or so. The rankings were based on a variety of statistics with the greatest weight put on 1) Life Expectancy 2) Infant Mortality and 3) Total Medical Spend.
For life expectancy, if you remove murder and suicide and car wrecks from the totals for every country- the US ranks first in the world. Murder, suicide and car wrecks are obviously issues in our society but they have absolutely nothing to do with the quality of our medical care.
Total spend, if you remove elective surgeries/procedures and research dollars our spend per person is about equal with other developed countries. When Betty gets a boob job (bless her) it lowers our "ranking" in the WHO study, which is crazy. The US spends more on medical research than the rest of the world combined and, as a result, gets ranked lower by the WHO standard.
Infant mortality, even the WHO in the actual report admitted that the only country that provided realistic data was the US. Further, the biggest issue with infant mortality is preemies. Most countries do not even include births that do not reach maturity in the stats. These countries include many that we are currently compared with including Canada, UK, Sweden, France, Germany etc. In fact, there are reports from the National Center for Health Statistics and European Perinatal Health Report that use much stricter definitions and, amazingly, the US ranks 1st by their methodology. Does anyone really think that normal babies born in America have a better chance of dying than other countries? It is absurd. It is also a perfect example of the whole WHO report. A preemie is born in the US with a heart problem. We will deliver the baby, operate on the heart, monitor the baby in a state of art NICU for months and will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Often the baby does die after all of that and, as a result, the "ranking" of the American medical system goes down because we spent a lot of money and our infant mortality rates went down. If we would just tell the parents the baby can not make it we would improve our WHO ranking.
Sorry for the long rant, but it is really hard to have a rational debate when we do not use the truth.
I think we should assume that the US has the very best medical system in the world. Meaning, if you need medical care for whatever reason- accident, illness, rehab etc.- the US is the very best place to get it.
There are, certainly, ways our system can be improved. I am open to ideas where we have more of a national system. However, only if there are adequate deductibles to keep usage under control and only if funded by a national sales tax.
Also, the debates between the efficiency of govt versus private are really silly. There is no question that the private sector is more efficient than the govt. The private sector has to compete.
Brisket used the term "commodity" up thread and in some ways he is right. But if we admit something is a commodity, then no one should/could argue that tremendous competition for profit among the deliverers of said commodity is the absolute best way to keep costs down.