The way health care should be handled.

Universal coverage is the only way to go.

Not because it's "fair", or "good", or anything touchy-feely. And today's Tea-flavored Republicans would rather let people die in the street than help them, so we can imagine how far an argument to do the "right thing" and make it a basic right would go.

Universal coverage is the only way to go for business reasons, pure and simple.

On its face, it's a simple system:

1) Money flows in.
2) Services are paid for.

You decide what services should be paid for, who should pay, and you're done.

Let's look at the system as it currently stands:

Money flows in, but not from everyone. So people get covered who aren't paying. So the rest of us pay too much.

Plus since health insurance is considered a private good, like cars or cocaine, a ton of money that goes in goes to making people rich instead of paying for health.

Costs are out of control because everyone jacks up their price to make more money. Pharma, doctors, hospitals, GE on the scanners, etc. This money doesn't go to health, it goes to make people richer. Which just goes into stocks that pushes prices up and makes other rich people richer. Not a bad system for the rich folks, but doesn't do much for health for them or anyone else.

We have a public system to pay for these services in some cases, like when you're old or poor. But because of the cost problem, there's no way that system can handle the costs. That's why the US is bankrupt in a decade or two BTW. It's not social security or "stimulus", it's health care costs.

The only way to fix health care is to bring costs down. The only way to bring costs down is to bring as many payers as possible into the system, and force those who are getting rich of peoples' misery to get less rich.

Only the gov't through law can do this. The problem will never, ever get solved in the private markets, where the mission is to charge as much and provide as little health care as possible.

But the quality of the service IS relevant. Because until the day when we just let people die in the street (a day the Tea Partiers eagerly await, I know), those health services will get paid for, one way or the other.

And it'll cost WAY too much, because people are getting rich off the system.
And it'll cost WAY too much, because helping someone lose weight cheaper is way cheaper than paying for their diabetes later.

So, if we want a healthy nation, and we do, because a nation of unhealthy, scared people is not going to be anywhere near its maximum economic productivity, we need to force costs down across the board, and get everyone paying.

It's not rocket science. But when things need to apply to everyone, only govt. can do it.