American Health Care System.

Even though Im generally against anything that socialized aspects of the economy, the American way of doing healthcare is clearly more expensive than possibly any other way.  I mean if you can fund a whole war with deficiet why not some healthcare too?

I think the best way would be to pull government sponsoreship completely from the pharmecutical industry.  And bust some pharma-trusts.  More compition rises and costs go down and no new taxes!

True to an extent. Its a very innefficient and unfair system of socialized medicine.

The absolute deadbeats will smoke and drink, get on social security disability, then medicaid. All their children will be on medicaid. And they show up in my ER demanding care, demanding narcotics.

Then a hard working family that can't qualify for assistance, yet makes too little money to buy insurance on the private market, or can't afford the $750 month premiums it takes to get insurance through their work. It doesn't work.

There is a fix, but Americans won't go for it.

Do away with all malpractice. Have evidence based guidelines for Drs. to follow. Peer review systems for cases with bad outcomes. This will lower the cost dramatically.

Create a one payor system for all citizens, young, working class, old.

The free market economy drives specialty care and advances in America. The quality of specialty care will go down. But as a nation, we can spend less of our GDP on healthcare.

I have full health insurance right now and I can get anykind of healthcare I need in a very short amount of time and I can get quality medical care.

But..

I want Universal Health Care. I want it now. Suppose you get laid off from a job. Your family just lost healthcare. In a country as advanced as the US, its ridiculous to think that anybody can not have access to healthcare. Its not like the US doesn't have the resources to have Universal health care either.

I don't follow you. 'Standardized fees and reimbursements' would mean government-regulated, wouldn't it? How else could they be standardised and the standards enforced? Isn't that 'socialised'?

I mean, how it works here is that there are a number of health funds ('Caisses de Maladie') and everyone is required to belong to one. There are then standardised fees and reimbursements and drig prices and so on, negotiated with the doctors and other suppliers.

With my fund (they don't all work quite the same) I go to the doctor/denitst I want, he bills me, I pass the bill to the fund and they reimburse me. If I go to the hospital, the hospital bills the fund direct.

Most Americans call what we have here 'socialised' medicine. What's the difference between that and what you're suggesting? Just that everyone is required to have health insurance in one of the approved funds?

I may not have made myself clear. Medical services here for the most part are private.  Doctors, dentists, physiotherapists, whatever, are mostly in private practice, though technicians and nursing staff and so on are employed by hospitals, some of them private, some of them run by the Church (Roman Catholic), some of them state-owned or municipality owned.

The critical difference is that insurance is compulsory (with contributions for the unemployed and disabled and so on paid as part of their benefits) and the insurance funds are state-run. (Though there's nothing to stop anyone paying extra for extra private insurance - covering bills incurred outside the EU for instance, or paying for 'treatment' not considered medically necessary, like some cosmetic surgery or dentistry.)

Since the insurance funds are public, they have no profit motive, the people who run them don't get grossly overpaid, and there's no incentive to try and cut costs by refusing to pay doctors (which is what I gather  your friend's main complaint is).