Thanks but I've got a greedy reason for posting. I'm genuinely curious as to why the only two options I hear about are corporate insurance and national insurance. Personal responsibility is the only way to keep costs under control; any kind of government plan is fundamentally broken. Yet many other countries have some form of socialism, so I wonder -- What am I missing?

Over here (Australia) we have both options. Many people have private health insurance, but there's also a pretty good public system. When I say pretty good, that's in comparison to some other systems out there. For people with private insurance, there are tax breaks, although that's all about to change by the looks of things. Anyway, we'll see how it goes, but for now we have both.

Because there is an inherent understanding around the world that medicine is a different beast. If someone wrecks their car and has no insurance, boo hoo for them we say, now you have no car. You must suffer the consequences of your actions, and rightly so. If someone is hurt and has no insurance, as a society we (and most others) say we can't simply let them die for their mistakes, those consequences are too great for what is essentially a sin of greed (not wanting to shell out for insurance--and I know people will jump in and say "it's not that they don't want to, they just can't afford it; but unless they're completely homeless and unemployed, the reality is they could "afford" it, just at a drastically reduced standard of living that understandably no one wants to endure.)

It is a reality that we are going to end up providing at least a base level of care for the people who choose not to take personal responsibility. So many countries have decided to remove the choice from their hands, and force "responsibility" on them in the form of mandated programs and taxes. Is that a better system than we have? I don't know, I've never experienced a socialized program, and really what everyone wonders in these scenarios is "will it be better for me?" As a middle-class family who already shells out a pretty decent but not absurd amount for our coverage, I suspect our personal situation is going to stay pretty much the same no matter what the system is. It's the people at either extreme who will feel the effects of it.

What if wrecking their car involves injuring not only themselves, but also other people and their property?
Conversely, if someone decides to engage in risky behaviors - they are not hurting others - they are only hurting themselves.

Don't worry. There's no plan that will affect the ability of the wealthy to self-finance their own treatment. But if I'm on a health plan, I'd trust a government beaurocrat over a health insurance company.

I wasn't ragging on capitalism; jut pointing out that there are some areas where market pressure isn't in the right direction.

That's precisely why the government mandates auto liability insurance. You have your choice of private companies, but other than that it is a direct example of enforced socialism.

I agree that is why auto insurance is mandated - not so much the socialism part though. Also, I don't think that transfers to Health insurance though.

On the contrary most government run single payer(governemnt run) plans DO NOT allow for opt outs or selectively going outside the plan to your own doctor. They control by making it illegal for the Doctor to treat outside the plan sometimes and continue to participate in the plan for the balance of his practice.

Lets not get distracted by the thousands of pages of details that are in these proposals. There is only one thing to consider. If the real objective is to control costs-and I believe that is NOT the real objective-then we need to look at the federal governments track record of 'controlling costs': medicare/medicaid costs 100's of percent higher than initially projected; education spending out of control for declining performance, $800 toilet seats and $140 screws, etc.

Or on a larger scale the overall success of centrally controlled governments at providing a decent quality of life for their citizenry- USSR, Communist China, North Korea, Iran, and how many others.

Bottom line --with the 'awful' healthcare system we have here-you can count on one hand the number of people leaving the US to get better health care elsewhere. And those are invariably for experimental treatments. And when residents of only those moderately socialist places like France, Scandinavia, Canada-with their government run programs need superior care, they come here.

First, I don't know about "most", but it is definitely not the case for all single-payer plans.

Second, there is no single payer plan being proposed for the US.

Are doctors who accept medicare allowed to treat medicare participants outside of medicare? NO!. Same in England, Canada, etc. And those are the systems advocates here look to as models of government plans.

In fact, they ARE proposing a single-payer in practice. By artificially creating a lower rate schedule people will opt for lower direct out of pocket and eventually dry up private carriers.

If they thought they could get the votes for an openly stated single-payer plan they would go right for it, because the outcome will not provide lower overall costs-its impossible when the government runs things-they would go right for it. But the words 'single paper' scare people too much so they put it in the details while denying it publicly.

Whoson is basically correct. If that plan makes it through the legislative process. The question remains will the historically powerful lobby of the health care insurance industry have the strenght to convince Congress to vote against it? This process of introducing the "alternative' government plan may encourage companies who currently provide insurance to their employees to drop it. The costs of such insurance for private companies is second only to payroll. Will the companies continue to pay for it or in more recent discussion allow employees to be taxed on it? What will be the penalty for those companies that drop their plans and let the people just go and apply for the government sponsored plan? Obama floated this during the election. No one knows. And given the previous process of how things have been ramrodded through Congress without having the time to read all of the details in massive bills we may never know til it is to late. The fallout will be felt in all sectors.

You are giving $1000+ a year to your car insurance company to pay for someone else's car wreck. You will get no refund when you stop driving, even if you've never had a wreck in your life. How is that not socialism?

Because when State Farm gives us a bad deal we can switch to Progressive.

And that's one of the biggest problems with the health care industry, that I've bitched about specifically before. The advent of employer-provided healthcare killed any real competition between the insurance companies--you just have to go with whoever your employer chooses. If anything, your employer should contribute to your health savings fund on your behalf, but you should have control of which insurance company you choose. That one tiny change right there would fix HUGE numbers of problems.

I agree, to a great extent, but unfortunately corporations are often the only ones big enough to negotiate good deals with the insurance companies, and (I think) it's harder for them to kick people out of the corporate plan than it is for them to boot sick individuals.