Too bad their dental care is so tragic.....show me a Brit with good teeth, and I will show you someone who had veneers later in life.

The United States health system is the most 'free market' in the industrialized world. Countries with a basic moral fabric for the welfare of their own citizens knew quite quickly that something like 18,000 people dying every year (as it does in this country) merely from a lack of coverage (not counting those with inadequate coverage) is something that is inexcusable. To remove what little amount of regulations we have on the system isn't just completely stupid but categorically immoral.

As a socialist I think pretty much everything is too important to be left up to the free market, but it doesn't take Fidel freaking Castro to understand that privatizing a nation's health just doesn't work. The vast majority of the industrialized world caught on to this little tidbit sixty years ago and we're still caught in the idealism of the 'invisible hand' while people are literally dying everyday.

Although Great Britain's system has its own issues, it's nothing even close to what we're suffering in the United States. And Great Britain isn't necessarily the shinning beacon of socialist health care either.

Here is the problem, "the most free market" doesn't cut it. Health care is far too important to be left to government, if we want quality coverage for all it MUST be left to a free market. Now if we just want coverage for all, then the government can do that, but I am not willing to settle, I think people deserve quality care. We need a TRULY free market. We have seen time and time again that socialism does not work, at least not well. So why not try the alternative?

By the way, people will die everyday regardless of healthcare, that's called nature... I think you should check out the videos on this site to understand the value of the free market, IdeaChannel.tv , it is a series called "Free to Choose" by one of the most brilliant economists of our time, Milton Friedman. They are a bit old (80's and 90's) but they are as valid today as ever.

All a 'truly free market' means is a complete eradication of existing regulations. Last time we did that in this country, people lived in tenements and worked all day for pennies in deplorable conditions for tyrannical monopolies that frequently crushed any hope of social or human rights.

I don't know what you're going on about experience showing us that 'socialism doesn't work.' It's quite the other way around. Every industrialized country that ranks better than us according to the World Health Organization has some kind of government intervention. Even the so-called 'free-markets' of Europe (Switzerland) and Japan have a lot more regulation than we do; enough to have the Reaganites yelling "commie". And incidentally, one of the most socialized systems in Europe, that of France, ranks the best in the world.

Experience has shown us that single-payer and socialized health care work. So why continue to try with the failed policies of "free-market reform"?

That's not an argument at all. The point is, is that they are needless deaths. That's like excusing murder simply because "well, people die everyday".

I've heard the theories of capitalists more than enough. Friedman's a complete asshat who developed theories of shock in order to fuck people sideways while they're most vulnerable. His theories informed the policies that lead to inequalities that were coupled with terrible human rights abuses. His last words were to take advantage of the scattered people of New Orleans, a disaster indicative of the failure of neo-liberal policies in the first place, and apply his franchise model on the city, ending up replacing public schools with for-profit ones, busting the teachers' union, and getting rid of their contracts.

The world's shoulders were lifted of a weight when that man died.

The U.K. system is better than ours, as well as the Swiss' system, and the French and the Canadian and the Japanese. Though all are not equal in their success and not every one of theirs would work here. I think Switzerland has the best.

I like that it is very competitive and that their administrative costs are such a low percentage in comparison to ours.

Here is a bit of info on the Swiss system:

• there is an insurance mandate for all individuals,
• the government defines a what the insurance benefit will be for all standard health insurers,
• insurance companies are not allowed to deny coverage to any individual,
• health insurance and medical procedure prices are made publicly available,
• in exchange for providing health insurance to consumers, insurance companies receive premiums from consumers and risk-adjustment payments from the government in order that insurance companies are not punished if they decide to insure a sicker population,
• premiums are community rated, meaning that sick and healthy individuals pay the same price within each age group (the age groupings are 0-18, 19-25, >25 years old).
• individuals are allowed to purchase supplement insurance as well (there is no regulated benefit for supplemental insurance),
• there is significant cost sharing in all insurance plans (i.e.: deductibles, 10% coinsurance rates up to an annual ceiling),
• open enrollment occurs twice per year (June and Ddecember).

In 2003, 49.7% of Swiss individuals choose ordinary deductible health insurance, 42.0% choose higher deductible health insurance, and 8.2% chose insurance with limited choice of provider networks (HMO-style contracts). Since only 8% of individuals are in managed care insurance firms, quality is fairly homogeneous across insurance companies.