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?

OK, here's one from that most recent meeting where Obama refered to the USPS:

"If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan."

and:

"For all the chatter and the yelling and the shouting and the noise, what you need to know is this ... if you do have health insurance, we will make sure that no insurance company or government bureaucrat gets between you and the care you need."

Seems that some people consistently snip out responses like that and replace them with versions from 1996 that are easier to attack.

Obama also said at the same meeting:

"Where we do disagree, let's disagree over things that are real, not these wild misrepresentations that bear no resemblance to anything that's actually been proposed. Because the way politics works sometimes is that people who want to keep things the way they are will try to scare the heck out of folks, and they'll create boogeymen out there."

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.

I've posted previously about the 40%, but opponents insist that waste and legal account for single figure percentages each. As for fraud- are you comparing medicare fraud to other insurance fraud or just cherrypicking items for attack?

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.

The link I gave you was for a procedure in a private hospital meaning you can't attribute the difference to a government subsidy. Malpractice insurance is much lower but that can't explain a $100K difference for a single procedure. Wages cannot possibly explain the $100K difference in cost either.

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

If you believe this, isn't it an argument for Tort reform? would everybody in the US be willing to forgo the right to sue apart from for negligence if it means a procedure costs $20K rather than $140K? Example: if you are told that a procedure has a 20% risk of infection and you decide to go ahead and of the 10 patients having the procedure that week, you get infected, should you be able to sue the surgeon or facility for their 10% infection rate which is better than the published standard? If you do want this right, don't you wonder whether an effective $100K premium really represents value for money?

These are the sorts of discussions that are needed IMHO but instead focus seems to be on Euthanasia boards and insurers being wiped out and lots of other exciting topics that may well lead towards the worst result of all: do nothing.