So half of US healthcare is already government-funded; and patient satisfaction with treatment is the highest in the world. Does that not count for something in the argument? -AS
No.
First, Moore cannot put everything into his film. He's already said that one could make a whole film on the drug companies themselves.
THE DAY AFTER - THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK!
What's more, I can just hear the thousands of private health insurance boosters - recall that there are three to four times as many health industry lobbyists in Washington than there are members of Congress, all of whose Blackberrys are working overtime this weekend! -- who are screted away, probably this very moment, on their beepers, with Nexis, with investigative services, to discredit everything and everyone who said anything or appeared in Moore's film.
Expect on Monday to find the backstories of every single 9/11 worker, Peena probed and discredited as 'old news', systematic problems dismissed (as always) as "mistakes" and "cracks", deaths contrasted with smiling children, and a slew of PR to make insurance industry executives look like Mother Theresa, working hard to provide 'affordability', with "Big Government" regulation the real culprit and, of course, those horrible, nasty trial lawyers who inject even a shred of accountability into the system portrayed as the bane of everything patriotic and 'American'.
We know the drill. At least some of us. Maybe enough to turn the tide?
'COVERAGE' VERSUS 'COVERAGE'
Anyway, on to the direct point:
No, because ...
On the first part, the government is paying larger sums because it is being 'adversely selected'. Put simply, the government is getting hit with large, end-of-life bills that the insurance companies are avoiding (to their profit), among other things.
Second, questions about 'satisfaction with treatment' hardly mean quite as much when you have so many without and without enough. Do you feel "satisfied' with treatment, knowing that it occurred at the expense of someone who was culled from your socialized, private insurance pool? Even moreso, knowing that is a false tradeoff forced on you?
Third, the most important point is that one can concede the point, in argument, about "satisfaction", and still point out that it would be possible to have more people 'satisfied' by moving to a single payer system, that gets rid of the "Nanny Corporation" and its waste.
