[quote=FlyerInHi]
The evidence is that single payer universal health care works very well. It’s no impediment to patients to seek fee for service care, outside the system, if they are willing and able to pay.[/quote]
Would it work well in those other countries if the American for profit system hadn’t developed a bunch of new drugs and medical technologies that they were able to access without paying the R&D costs. We don’t really know.
Socialistic policies tend to lack innovation and creativity. They tend to be able to deliver a service but not the best service. Obviously you’d probably rather be treated in a US hospital than a Cuban one even though Cuba has one of the highest ratios of doctors per patients in the world.
America has a public education system that is highly socialized and it performs pretty poorly. It provides education but most would agree it doesn’t exactly do it as well as many other countries. At the same time we have private College education that is the best in the world.
Pure capitalism means some people get left behind. Pure socialism means nobody gets ahead. Finding the right balance is difficult but it seems to me that leaning more capitalist tends to be better for society as a whole. See Germany vs France or the UK vs Italy. See the US vs Russia 30 years ago.