I’m calling you a hypocrite.

Never. There’s a difference between calling you out because you don’t read why *I* write, and not bothering to read something which, from your citation of the data within, is false.

Your suggestion that emergency surgeries are 1% of surgeries, therefore the lack of ability to negotiate for them is not a problem worth solving,

Never said it wasn’t a problem worth solving. Don’t put words in my mouth.

Your dismissal of a several hundred dollar co-pay for a medical procedure as no big deal, when 47.5% of Americans are living hand to mouth with no disposable income to pay such a cost, is callous, and suggests you don’t understand the problem.

Oh, I understand the problem perfectly. What I also understand, and you don’t, is that it is impossible for any government to indemnify its citizens against all hardships. It would be nice to live in utopia, but nobody does.

Treating healthcare as a free market commodity is wrong-headed. Your examples of the Netherlands, Switzerland and Singapore do not help your argument. Your previous example of Germany, the last time we discussed this, didn’t help either.

Didn’t help what? The POINT was that you can insert cost awareness into a universal coverage system without resorting to the idiocy of the WW2-era solution known as “single payer.” Ergo, the point was made.

All are highly regulated, decidedly not-free-markets.

Yes, they are. I’ve always said that as much as a free-market solution was preferable, that horse has left the barn. The only path forward is a dual-payer system that incents the patient to control costs.

All rely heavily on taxation and public payments, along with severe price restrictions controlled by the government — or, classic socialized healthcare. They have private insurers, but the costs are distributed and controlled.

Yes. Pity we have to resort to this, but now that the US has made it’s bed, there’s no choice but to lie in it. But, as long as the providers and the insurers are still self-employed and have full-to reasonable discretion on price and rate control, we still have hope.

Singapore’s system is a government-controlled system. No one is left out.

The Singapore model is a good one. Here’s what the American Enterprise Institute says about it:

What’s the reason for Singapore’s success? It’s not government spending. The state, using taxes, funds only about one-fourth of Singapore’s total health costs. Individuals and their employers pay for the rest. In fact, the latest figures show that Singapore’s government spends only $381 (all dollars in this article are U.S.) per capita on health — or one-seventh what the U.S. government spends.Singapore’s system requires individuals to take responsibility for their own health, and for much of their own spending on medical care.

And Vox says this about it:

Here’s what Singapore’s conservative admirers get right: Singapore really is the only truly universal health insurance system in the world based on the idea that patients, not insurers, should bear the costs of routine care.

Which is what I’m advocating. The Singapore model has characteristics that are similar to HSA proposals. Thus, it’s in many ways what I’m advocating: a government-managed system with private insurers where patients benefit financially by shopping price.

Thanks for bringing it up.

Basically, your objection to socialized healthcare assumes that the price restrictions would be limited to the point of service, not on the equipment and drugs they purchase, which is stupid.

Wrong.

Your examples of places where a private market works and socialized medicine isn’t necessary are all, to a great extent, socialized systems.

Ah, I see. In your walnut-sized mind, it’s all black and white. Things are either free market, or they’re “socialism.”

Ron, you’re dumb as a post. You’re a stellar example of why we can never let progressives run the place.