The typical universal health care debate is as absurd as my comment. Verdon just nailed one point, but the "cost" of inferior quality and restricted access are never mentioned by universal health care advocates.

I find myself unable to take any commentator on the subject seriously unless they are willing to acknowledge that we need to reintroduce price, and the original concept of insurance into the debate.

Could you expound on this a bit? Is it that somehow IP won't be honored in a single payer system? Is the VA making counterfeit Prozac?

Are you being deliberately obtuse? Just curious.

In the event you aren't the standard argument goes something like this:

1. In the Country of Milk and Honey they pay $X for universal health care.
2. In the U.S. they pay $2X (for the sake of argument) for non-universal health care.
3. If we just switch to the same model that is used in the Country of Milk and Honey, why we could save $X on health care.

Now, if the health care firms in U.S. are some of the primary providers of intellectual property--i.e. new drugs, etc.--then it is possible that these other countries are essentially free riding which could explain in part the cost differential. Thus we may not be able to save $X becuase we'd still have to pay that portion that is due to the production of health care related IP.

Or is allowing large purchasers to negotiate quantity discount somehow detrimental to IP?

Not necessarily, but the U.S. consumers are the one's largely footing the bill then go to step one above.

As for a single payer system honoring IP, yes that is another potential problem. In many countries health care costs are spiralling out of control (e.g. Britain, Canada, and France). One way to help with that problem would be to change IP laws so that the holders of IP no longer enjoy their temporary monopoly. This could reduce the overall level of R&D in the future making us all worse off.

Nope, but if there is a drug you know works, and the VA can't get it cheaply enough they don't give it to you.

We learned several years back that Advair is one of the best treatments for controlling my husband's asthma (which is a service connected disability). The VA refuses to give him Advair, and instead gives him another approved drug, which isn't as good, which also leads to my husband having several asthma flare ups the advair prevented. He also, for a very long time could not get zyrtec through the VA, even though other allergy drugs did not work or he could not take, and he had to try a whole slew of drugs before they would finally prescribe singulair.

I am thinking the VA system isn't what I want for the rest of my family-either in the drug choices they make to save money, or in quality of care (which varies a lot-quality of care in Durham, NC was excellent, but quality of care in rural NH stinks).

I've argued in the past that the intellecutal property aspect of health care is not taken into account by many who talk about health care and U.S. health care costs (this would mostly be liberals).

Could you expound on this a bit? Is it that somehow IP won't be honored in a single payer system? Is the VA making counterfeit Prozac?

Or is allowing large purchasers to negotiate quantity discount somehow detrimental to IP?

In short most people engage in half-assed sloppy thinking on this topic.