anuran is correct about the fact that the Beveridge (UK, Canada) or Bismarck (France, Germany, Israel) model or some combination of the two (Japan) would be better. But we lost the opportunity to get the Beveridge model in the 1960s when Medicare was limited to the elderly and we lost the opportunity to get the Bismarck model when Congress failed to pass Nixon’s national health insurance proposal. This is the best we can get now and it only passed with three votes to spare in the House and zero votes to spare in the Senate. Hopefully we can improve the system in the future, but for over 30 million Americans without heath insurance this change alone may be the difference between life and death.
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