What will we have to give up if we go to universal coverage? That’s something that isn’t covered by the media:
You might think that providing universal health care coverage is going to solve a big health care problem in America. If that’s what you think, I’m guessing that you have not delved into the matter in any great detail . . . My first eye-opening discovery was that access to new, life-saving (and extremely expensive) cancer drugs is much faster in America than anywhere else in the world. It might make sense to deny Americans access to these life saving drugs and to use the money saved to provide health insurance to the poor, but the point is that there are tradeoffs to be made. Once you come to appreciate that fact, the needle on your outrage detector will come down off its maximum value. I read somewhere that Michael Moore thinks that France has the best health care system in the world. Maybe, but I don’t think he’d hold that view if he lived in France and had cancer (and was told that they pay for their number-one system by not paying for the extremely expensive drugs that could save his life).My second surprise was that the lack of access to regular health care in America was largely due to factors unrelated to health care coverage, which means that providing universal coverage won’t address that issue in any way.
