About folks complaining in universal health care that some will use it a lot while others won't:
When you buy into a private healthcare plan in the US, you are basically buying into a closed network of cooperating consumers where the heavy users of the insurance are subsidized and cared for by those who don't use it as much, yet who pay monthly premiums, etc., anyway.
There is an excellent interview on Terry Gross's "Fresh Air" with Jonathan Oberlander, associate professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and consultant for various government health agencies. Oberlander mentions this. It's really a no-brainer, but a nice talking point to also level against folks who beat their chests with an every-man-for-themselves mentality, which is what I've heard most non-univseral health arguments boil down to. (Just like folks who are against collectives, etc., forget a corporation is a collective itself, like a nation-state, albeit an extremely authoritarian one.)
Listen online here the Gross interview about Sicko here:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11826524
Oberlander does a great job comparing US to Canadian, British, and French healthcare, but he thinks if serious healthcare reform happens it'd more resemble Germany or Australia or France. Having worked on healthcare for decades, Oberlander is asked what it's like to have worked so long to see nothing change in the US. His reply -- it's like the movie Groundhog Dog where every day you get up, yet it's the same day all over again, and nothing has changed. For twenty years.
-B.
Jordan Hayes wrote:
" Also, the idea that everyone would have it inevitably leads to some people saying: hey, he's getting more than I am! The big news: the less health care you get (so long as you get all that you need), the better off you are!"