Your entire rebuttal is basically "government is bad" and inefficient and wasteful and evil and etc. Yet the basic fact remains that the French get excellent health care at a fraction of the cost that we pay for ours.

Rebuttal failed. Missed, in fact, since it was all entirely beside the point, not addressing the actual points you were supposedly refuting.

You end with a gratuitous slam at France that has nothing to do with the claim that their citizens are well taken care of by the health care system. Unemployment is a problem, particularly among the group you mentioned. The US has no problems? And what in the world does that have to do with health care?

And before you start with the imminently predictable "Yeah but they get crappy care and wait forever", spare me. Unless you actually know what you're talking about by using it for years as I did.

I'll underline what I wrote earlier: France has a government run program that accomplishes as much as ours for a fraction of the price. If you're saying that France can pull off something that we're incapable of, I'm surprised you think that we're that congenitally incompetent.

I don't.

Move to France if you want French healt care.

Ah, right on schedule. (See my first post here).

My response: I did. Lived there for many years.

The health care in France made ours look like it was designed by a room full of lobotomized monkeys.

Non-lobotomized monkeys would have done much better.

The long waits, the incompetence, the insane bureaucracy, all of that I find now that I'm back in the US.

Looking at your first post again, this part really stands out as a perfect example of the smoke and mirrors that confuses this issue:

"Living in a wheel chair for three years is not to great a sacrifice so long as poor people can get an annual check up."

There are so many wrongheaded assumptions being foisted here that it's worth unpacking.

The first is the myth that if universal health care were created in the US, then private health insurance would be outlawed somehow. Even in the countries we're discussing with full universal coverage there are still private insurers selling insurance ("See? That proves that universal coverage is a failure!" is the customary right wing response to this, another bizarre assumption that I'll come back to in a second). No one is proposing making private health insurance illegal, or if they are, no one is listening.

So the wheelchair line above is based on the idea that if you weren't "poor", then you'd be forced to use government-provided health care and prohibited from carrying any private insurance, or from just paying for any procedures you want to. Otherwise, why would it matter?

The second issue with this statement however is simply how inanely cruel it is. So "living in a wheelchair for three years" and "never having even a checkup" are not similarly tragic things for anyone to suffer? Having children grow up never able to see a doctor or receive any health care at all is just a matter of oh well, those are breaks?

The idea being put forward here seems to be that anyone above the poverty line should get preference, and anyone below it can go without anything, and that's how it should be, according to some Republican version of the natural order.

No one is talking about outlawing private insurance. As I say, in places like France it's used as supplemental coverage by those who can afford it, at times, if they want to. As far as this proving that the system doesn't work, it's exactly the opposite. Isn't that the best of both worlds? Private insurance with all its glories, the ones you're singing of, and then universal coverage for anyone who can't afford it?

Again, the proof is that it works. Just that way, and those who've actually lived with it know that, despite the right wing talking points from those who never have.

You should have stayed there

I'm heading back soon, thanks. I can't wait.

Despite your goon-like "love it or leave it" slogans, you actually bring up some points worth debating in the rest of your post. Again I'd simply underline what I said already: Do you really think that we can't pull off something that France did? Yes, Americans have a lot of issues that would require examining, about our assumption that everything must be privatized and deregulated and so on... but isn't that what we're debating here??

Saying "Bah, the French are brilliant and pulled it off but we can't" is a very un-American attitude, if you ask me.

On top of that however, what "risk"?? Your repeating over and over that someone would be trying to "force" you to use only government insurance is--- meh.

You'll just keep repeating it, no matter how many times anyone shows that it's wrong.

Never mind.

Nonetheless, I would prefer this problem to the hassles of negotiating with insurance companies over whether they will pay for this or that procedure.

Bingo.

I presume that you'd also prefer it to having none, or going into debt to the tune of bankruptcy, also.

Canadians and French and many others complain and moan about their coverage, but nearly any one you ask "would you prefer a US-style system?" say no.

If you expand by asking "Would you prefer coverage that you could lose any time you lose a job, could be dropped for any reason, even no reason, could drive you easily into bankruptcy if you ever get really sick, even if you have what you thought was pretty good coverage, as many in the US are every day?" then the "no" becomes even more emphatic. They often really have no idea how bad ours is.