Government controlled healthcare is generally superior to private systems. *
Argument: The incentives of a government body that knows it will have to pay for the costs of future healthcare is radically different from private companies. They are more likely to take preventative measures to prevent future harms to a patient rather than waiting until the point where a condition is considered serious enough to be covered by insurance or bring people to an emergency room. They have incentives to make procedures cheaper and more efficient, and they also lack the perverse incentives to increase number and cost of procedures in order to maximise profit.
*[I'm basing this on knowledge of the UK system (free to all at the point of delivery, paid for by taxes, private healthcare/insurance can also be bought as a supplement.) I don't know enough about alternatives such as individual mandate to comment helpfully on them.]
One of the biggest facts on the ground here is that the US spends (more or less) 2X as much as any other rich western country, and is not statistically better on any quantitative metric for its extra expense. So one would presumably benefit immensely from understanding what the US is doing wrong compared to other rich western systems.
Is the difference that the US is not government controlled while others are? Arguing against that are these facts: 1) 50% of medical expenses in the US are made by the government (the number is 70% for Canada). 2) US heal...
In line with the results of the poll here, a thread for discussing politics. Incidentally, folks, I think downvoting the option you disagree with in a poll is generally considered poor form.
1.) Top-level comments should introduce arguments; responses should be responses to those arguments.
2.) Upvote and downvote based on whether or not you find an argument convincing in the context in which it was raised. This means if it's a good argument against the argument it is responding to, not whether or not there's a good/obvious counterargument to it; if you have a good counterargument, raise it. If it's a convincing argument, and the counterargument is also convincing, upvote both. If both arguments are unconvincing, downvote both.
3.) A single argument per comment would be ideal; as MixedNuts points out here, it's otherwise hard to distinguish between one good and one bad argument, which makes the upvoting/downvoting difficult to evaluate.
4.) In general try to avoid color politics; try to discuss political issues, rather than political parties, wherever possible.
If anybody thinks the rules should be dropped here, now that we're no longer conducting a test - I already dropped the upvoting/downvoting limits I tried, unsuccessfully, to put in - let me know. The first rule is the only one I think is strictly necessary.
Debiasing attempt: If you haven't yet read Politics is the Mindkiller, you should.