Lee_M said:
I don't see any reason why it wouldn't scale proportionally.The denser population would mean more tax being generated to cover public healthcare costs, Right?
No, the effective tax rate does. NHS gets just under 2,000 pounds per man,woman,child.
If anything, a denser population would probably allow for more centralisation of facilities and staff than a sparser population would.
US is much less densely populated than europe. One reason there are no high speed trains here.
Also, What does diversity or ethnicity have to do with healthcare?
Cultural expectations... Nations with homogeneous populations, that are accustomed to paying high tax rates to receive high levels of government service, are more willing to embrace government run health care.
It's not free though, Is it? People pay for it with their taxes, It just means that big pharma doesn't get to take a cut for doing nothing.
That is an overly simplistic characterization. I have been writing about this for years. The US is wealthy and generous. We in effect subsidize low drug prices around the world by supporting R&D costs with high prices here. As drugs prices fall under the microscope of voter inspection, I doubt they will be as generous in the future.
I am willing to embrace a single world drug price, where the US pays the exact same drug prices as everybody else, and the drug makers must fund future R&D costs from "all" customers. Truly poor nations deserve a price break, but the rest of the (wealthy) western world needs to pay a fair price for drugs.
As long as the system is properly paid for through tax and politicians ensure adequate funding is maintained in line with population growth, I don't think this would be a problem.
One significant complaint about the current ACA is the massive wealth transfer engineered into it. While this is a long term goal of the left... If we actually want to do that, lets do wealth transfers with even more progressive tax policy and not conceal it in health care reform.
The USA would do well to set up national health service, Like in the UK, As that removes insurers completely from the equation.
Of course, Most republicans and democrats are firmly in the pockets of the private health corporations, so that won't happen.
Beware of simple answers to complex problems.
The NHS is 98% funded by taxes and consumes roughly 10% of GDP. It has been in place since WWII and generally works. All socialized health care systems have problems with an aging population and end of life costs. They are no exception.
The current ACA is IMO a train wreck that was designed to fail, so a future left leaning administration could bail it out with even more taxpayer resources. That didn't happen, so now we are in the difficult position of trying to rationalize this. The US has never taken back a single entitlement once granted, and I don't expect them to start now, but hopefully they can reign this into something we can afford.
As I have been saying all along, this will not be easy... recent evidence supports my opinion, but it is still early in the administration's term. I expect tax reform and budget (debt) issues to consume all the political oxygen in the room for a while. Hopefully the democrats will eventually join the party so we can have a bi-partisan effort. The only thing IMO that can work long term.
But what would I know?
JR