Center For Public Integrity: Wendell Potter: 'Britain's Healthcare System is Better'

Center For Public Integrity: Opinion: Wendell Potter: 'Socialized' or not, Britain's Health Care System is Superior

This post was originally posted at The New Democrat on WordPress

Just case there isn’t enough evidence that America won’t have a British based government-run health care system both health insurance and health care anytime soon perhaps not even in my lifetime and I’ll forty this year, is look at the Veterans Administration and the reforms they went though last year. Because of bipartisan legislation passed out of the last Congress that even Democratic Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders voted for and was actually one of the authors of the bill. That gives our military veterans actual choice which is a four-letter word for Socialists for the most part, in how they receive their health care. They now have an option of private or public health care.

Not even politicians and political activists as far to the Left as Senator Bernie Sanders, Ralph Nader and former U.S. Representative Dennis Kucinich are calling for a complete nationalization of the United States health care system. They want Medicare For All single payer to go along with the private health care system. Meaning the providers, meaning hospitals and clinics. Senator Sanders is open to having a Medicare public option as a compromise to single payer. If the British health care system is so great, then why are they only of 3-4 developed countries in the world that have a complete government-run health care system. Britain, Sweden and maybe one or two others. Sweden a country of nine-million people by the way. That has a lot of land and is not only energy independent, but a net exporter of energy.

Seriously if anyone thinks that U.K. NHS is the health care model for America, first take a look at the VA pre-2014 and to see if that is what you want to impose on the entire country. And if you still believe that then propose the plan for complete nationalization of the American health care system. Which means not only outlawing private health insurers, but nationalizing private hospitals and clinics, making all doctors in the country now federal employees and nationalizing local community own and run hospitals and clinics. Even Britain has started moving away form their own state-owned health care system and has allowed for some private hospitals and clinics and small health insurers.

I like the Medicare public option idea and was a supporter of it back in 2009-10 and not for the reasons that Social Democrats in America wanted it. They saw it as the last step before single payer. I supported it for the opposite reasons because it would bring in that word that Social Democrats hate and see as a four-letter word, which is competition. You have Medicare available for everyone and get it out of the hands of Congress and the Administration and let it run a non-profit under the same regulations as private non-profits and it would force private health insurers including for-profits to deliver better services or risk losing a lot of business. That is how you improve health care in America and make it more affordable. Competition instead of creating a gigantic monopoly.