>The solution you seem to advocate is to have the government take over or drive out of business all car companies and provide a one-size-fits-all Volga for everyone. I fail to see the benefit.
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>*Nobody* sees the benefit in that AFAICS. It's a straw bogeyman.

Pardon me John but have you actually read any of the quotes recently posted by me and others from Obama, Frank, Pelosi, Emmanual (Ezekial not Rahm) to name just a few? Many elected leaders are actively pursuing a single-payor agenda on the Canadian/Britich model. You can read the bills yourself and see exactly how the plan to enact it step-by-step will play out. That has been written about extensively and links have been posted here. If you will not even acknowledge that there exists those whose agenda is exactly a single payor system, then how can we carry on a dialogue?

>the current proposals seek to expand the role of Medicare, the single greatest cause of fraud in the current system
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>That may be true, but fraud does not account for the >50% cost markup.

There exist studies that suggest waste, fraud and defensive medicine due to the legal climate account for 40+% of health care spending in the US. IIRC the latest numbers on medicare fraud are $50 billion/year.

>not one of the current proposals seeks to address legal reform
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>The AMA would agree with you there though opponents would claim that litigation adds a single-figure percentage to cost, not 50%.

Perhaps to individual procedures, but the extra cost due to malpractice insurance premiums and unnecessary tests defensively employed, plus the shuffling paperwork and waste add up to considerably more. This says nothing of the discouragement of future health care professionals who'll go into different lines of work.

>the free market is the greatest facilitator of cost reduction for new technology and all of the current proposals seek to further restrict the market
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>New technology can reduce cost but it isn't an explanation or solution in this case. Review http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_tourism#New_Zealand and tell me where you suppose these cost differences are derived, bearing in mind that the patient will receive an identical prosthesis. FWIW NZ does have serious health system funding issues too- I think everybody in the first world does, not least because of the aging population- but for the US to start with such a cost disadvantage doesn't make it easy.

From the story cited by Wiki
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/2009/06/07/20090607rxtourism0607.html#reply17699291
Reasons for the price difference between the U.S. and other countries are many: lower malpractice insurance for overseas doctors, reduced pay rates for nurses and other professionals, and greater government subsidies for health-care systems.
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Many patients don't realize that surgeries in other countries cost less in large part because physicians and hospitals there aren't required to carry the same level of malpractice insurance as their U.S.-based counterparts.

That means medical tourists don't have the same ability to seek compensation if something goes wrong.

"They are really giving up their rights to sue," said Edelheit, whose Medical Tourism Association was formed two years ago to educate patients and bring some regulation to the industry. "There is really little to no recourse."