Insurance companies in the US only have about a 1% profit margin according to analysts. If you ask most medical professionals about the high costs, they will point to the lack of tort (legal liability) reform that drives them to be more cautious and order more tests than are statistically required, and to be most wasteful in providing superfluous care. That's why even neighboring countries rely upon the US for its abundance of medical imaging equipment. The high cost of drugs is largely ascribed to the cost of research, an area in which the US significantly leads the rest of the world. I'm type 2 diabetic and I have this medicare plan [medisupps.com] covering my ass since I would go bankrupt with all the expenses.

The last time the Dems really did anything radical on healthcare to help the lower classes was Medicare and Medicaid in the 1960s. Since the 1970s the Dems have been bought off by the health industry lobbies from doing anything that radical again. Plus, in the 1990s the DLC was formed, Dems began getting addicted to corporate money for campaigns and quit caring about the poor or even the middle class on economic issues. They are united with the Repubs in opposing single-payer, Medicare For All or whatever you may want to call it. Some docs are greedheads, some aren't. I've met both kinds as well as some that aren't caring with patients and some that are.

I think being a doc has got to be a very tough job and I want someone in it who is both very smart AND caring, but you won't always get both. But considering I have spent my whole life as a taxpayer having to at least partly fund the medical education of docs while all the while in the US I have NEVER been garaunteed health care as a right, I don't have much sympathy for docs who whine about how unfair it would be under single-payer or Medicare For All if they all had to become govt. employees. Where's the justice in having to fund their education if I have no right to use their services unless I can afford to pay? Let them be govt. employees like in the rest of the world, and the greedhead docs will leave the system. Good riddance, because I have met plenty of very smart people in my life who couldn't get into med school AND cared about people.

A very kind, friendly doc I got to know a bit called himself a "blue collar doc" because he was a GP or Family Practice doc, not some high paid specialist. He also said that the AMA and its equivalent group for DO docs (non-MD docs) were actually greatly in favor of single-payer healthcare for the US. He said the real opposition is both the politicians in both parties that oppose it and the industry groups that are making so much profit off the 40% of the US healthcare system that is not under Medicare, Medicaid, or Tricare (the VA system).

The governments needs to say "We're going to give you the quality of healthcare that the citizens for Spain get for free if you want more or better healthcare, you're going to have to pay for that yourself.

Of course it would. Most other western countries have medicare even Mexico have universal health care.

Studies have shown countries with a national health system often show a diminished religiosity. I can't believe the religious are savvy to these studies but they might understand keeping healthcare for all out of play it means people are more likely to look to a "higher power" to keep them healthy.

Thanks to the Republicans, we are the only industrialized nation which does not provide universal health care. That shows how little they really care about people as a whole.

Been saying this for years. Get cons onboard by calling it a business aid.