Why does every democracy with nat'l health care keep it?

If Medicare for Everyone is So Bad, Why Does Every Nation Who Has It Keep It?

By Dave Lindorff

August 10, 2009 | Buzzflash.com

Questions Should You Find Yourself at a microphone at a 'Town Meeting':

1. If Canada's single-payer system is so God-awful, why have repeated Conservative governments at the provincial and national level in Canada never touched it? Canada is a democracy. If Canadians don't like their health care system, why haven't they gotten rid of it in 35 years? Since the system there is run by the separate provinces, many of which are very politically conservative, why has not one province ever tried to get rid of single-payer?

[By the same token, why haven't Britain, France, Sweden, Japan, or a host of other democracies gotten rid of their "ineffective" "socialist" health care systems? – J]

2. Why is rationing by income, as we do it here, better than rationing by need, as they do it in Canada?

3. Wouldn't single-payer mean that companies could no longer threaten working people with the loss of their health insurance? Why is this a bad idea?

4. The bigger the insurance pool, the better. So doesn't having a national pool, as with single-payer, make the most sense?

5. Why should we be allowing politicians who are taking money from the medical industry to write the new health care legislation?

6. How can the Congress be developing a health system reform scheme and not even invite experts from Canada down to explain their successful system?

[And Germany, and the UK, France, Sweden – a bunch of countries which have slightly different systems. It would be great to hear it from the horse's mouth. – J]

7. If Medicare--a single-payer system here in America--is so popular with the elderly, how come it's no good for the rest of us?

[Here's a question nobody dares to ask: Are older conservatives so scared of losing some of their Medicare coverage, that they will oppose health reform for the rest of us on the hypocritical grounds that more government-funded health care (for others, not for them) would be "socialism?" – J]

8. Isn't it true that Medicare currently finances the most costly patient group--the elderly and infirm--so that extending it to the rest of the population--most of whom are young and healthy--would be much cheaper, per person?

9. The AMA, the Pharmaceutical Industry, and the Insurance Industry all bitterly opposed Medicare in 1964-5 when it was being debated in Congress and passed into law, with the right, led by Ronald Reagan, calling it creeping socialism. It became a life-saver for the elderly and didn't turn the US into a soviet republic. Why should we give a tinker's damn what those same three industry groups and the Republican right think of expanding single-payer now?

10. The executives of Canadian subsidiaries of US companies all support Canada's single-payer system, and even lobby collectively to have it expanded and better funded. Why does Congress listen to the executives of the parent companies here at home, and not invite those Canadian execs down to explain why they like single-payer?