| abstract | - Universal Health Care is the provision of health care to all persons in a society. The United States is the sole exception to the rule that advanced industrial democracies guarantee universal health care. Alice Cherbonnier identified a common sense focusing grid for health care reform: Q: What do we want to achieve? A: An equitable, high-quality and cost-efficient healthcare system that covers everyone. Q: What do we want to preserve? A: Freedom of choice of providers, jobs, and quick access to care when needed. Q: What do we want to avoid? A: Substandard care, a system that doesn't cover everyone, major cost increases, overblown ad budgets for medicines, an ongoing increase to the federal deficit. Q: What do we want to eliminate? A: Duplication of services in saturated markets, waste of all kinds, inefficient administrative bureaucracies.
- Universal health care is something they have in reasonable (relatively liberal compared to the US) countries like France, Canada and Denmark. It's available to everyone and it's paid for by taxes, the only difference is that it is free at point of access, so no need to worry about having a heart attack while there is no money in the account. In most of Europe there is some degree of free medical care (with Germany having the oldest system still in use, dating back to the 1880s). In Latin America: Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela all got Universal Health Care ahead of the United States. Now does that mean that every single industrialized country apart from the United States is wrong and has a liberal bias? Well not all Conservatives want you to think that, but certainly the more shitheaded Conservatives, such as Andrew Schlafly, want you to think so.
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