Like most of the things in this world, the rest of the world gets a free ride because of the contributions of the US economy and corporations. Specifically, much of the great research and innovation in medical research comes from the US. These advances can only be funded with a true market economy. Canada, Cuba, and Mexico are not going to be on the cutting edge of medical research because there is no market incentive for such progress.
In many ways, it is like Europe and Canada’s free ride on military spending. They can devote a larger chunck of their tax receipts to ridiculous socialist programs because they don’t have to defends themselves. They know the US will do it for them. The same is true for healthcare. If we decided to transfer from a market orientated system to a single payer, it would mean significantly much less inovation and R&D, which would literally means millions of people across the world would die sooner because they did not receive the latest treatments.
Besides, it is amazing what percentage of the uninsured are very young, illegal aliens, or those that are too lazy to fill out the paperwork for Medicare. Do we really want to funadamentally transform the US economy (and curtailing inovation) for this segment of the population?
