Would there be tiny, but real, increase in missed diagnoses resulting in pain, suffering, and death? YES. And there’s the rub. As a nation of 300 million people, are we willing to sacrifice these people for the resulting cost savings? I doubt it.

Americans seem to always want it both ways.

Sigh…..

They pay less for many reasons. Certainly there are fewer fingers in the pie, so to speak, when there is one entity writing the check. And, like with U.S. Medicare, there are outright price controls. But when you ration, and those countries you speak of certainly do ration, directly and indirectly, there is just less consumption overall. Now some people say that has to be alright, as life expectancy and infant mortality and other statistical indicators show longer life expectancy and lower infant mortality elsewhere. There are arguments that there indicies are not apples-to-apples in the way they are obtained (what, for instance, counts as an infant “mortality” among premature births–there are differences), but even where comparable, is life expectancy directly correlated with health care service availability, or perhaps a result of many factors, only one of which is availability of medical and other health-related services? Saying that the people of Japan or Singapore or France spend less per capita on medical care and appear “healthier”, even if true (and factoring offset costs in education between systems), doesn’t mean that universal access using their same models here will necessarily result in the same outcomes here. Consider that our society may be different enough in other ways that delivering services on the socialized health care model, or government insurance model, might result in worse, not better outcomes using the same statistical indicators we presently use to make these comparisons. I don’t think that is beyond imagining.