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>I think the bad part of this is that, again if my theory is true, you may be paying (through taxes) for drugs you'll never use or need.
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Dean,

I don't think you are right on this, but to be honest I don't know either.
But I want to say something about 'paying for stuff you'll never need'...

Our socialized medicare is really a form of insurance, against catastrophic medical costs. Many of your countrymen spend money on the same thing, for the same purpose, but yours typically has tons and tons more controls on "services" and coverages and typically makes "pre-existing conditions" too expensive to cover.
Now ask yourself if your own insurer for medical services would have cheaper premiums if EVERYONE in the U.S. was a subscriber.

Our socialized medical system has (and still does) come under heavy fire for roughly the same reason you state... paying for stuff you'll never need. Many prominent newspaper columnists and radio/TV personalities have railed that they are paying for things they simply don't need and that this is wrong. Some of them, though, have later had one of their children or a close family member get very very sick or badly injured, and most of them have later admitted that they were wrong in their original position and stated that they surely would have gone broke and lost everything they had if it weren't for "medicare".

In other words, you pay insurance premiums for SOME coverage and hope against hope that you will never need it. And if you ever do need it, then you hope against hope that you can get approval for the doctors' recommended procedures and such from some clerk of the insurance company.

So what do you see as the difference between 'paying for what you'll never use or need' under our system compared to yours? Don't you hope that you'll never need your insurance to kick in?... And don't you pay the premiums anyways?

Jim