Right, you can't use rail unless you have high utilization, and you can't have high utilization if the rail doesn't do the job you need to do, or if the public transportation systems along the rail line don't work. That's why PRT makes more sense than rail for most trips, and why we should use classic rail only for long hauls and PRT for short trips.

Japan and Germany are specially well suited to welfare programs in general because of their culture. They're not going to abuse it or run amok like Italy or Greece. You can't just rip a social system out of it's cultural context and expect it to just magically work.

What I hear from Canadian patients inspires no envy what so ever.

Americans really do seem to see themselves as "temporarily embarrassed millionaires".

There's a lot of truth in that, tbh.

The country that got to be rich and powerful by innovation and thought is all for more of that in the medical space. I switched insurance plans last year. Give me a better option and I'll switch again. All I'm saying is don't take away the thing I chose because I like it, then give me something else and tell me it doesn't matter if I like it because it's the only game in town. That's not innovation.

With enough employees or volunteers and time and money, yes I'm sure these 2 guys could monitor every police jurisdiction in the country.

Sure. That's exactly what we need: less transparency and less patient responsibility. That's just the "perfect" response to an OP that is complaining about the utter lack of accountability or auditability here.

Plus you get the added bonus of no alternative options and no recourse for incompetence and delay.

You're describing one system, not all systems that use single-payer. I can't remember if it was Germany or a Nordic nation that was profiled, but for them you just showed up for GP visits.

Saying, in effect, that some countries do it right and some don't really makes my point. If you implement this in a nation of 300,000,000 people where moving to another country is kind of a very big deal, you're hosed if your country doesn't do it right.

Now consider that I live in a country that periodically shuts its government down because they can't even pass a budget.

The last two times I was in the ER, I would have happily yielded to an actively bleeding patient.

I am not a total anti-social psychopath despite what some of my posts might indicate.

Yeah, you can't build rail just for freight, because it won't see enough utilization. It has to carry passengers, too. You can't take the efficiency of the freight-carrying system alone because it doesn't operate alone, it's dependent on being part of the passenger-carrying system (and vice versa.)

If you won't take criticism, you can never improve. But you can cry instead, if you want.

Not only do we have medical bills (or EOBs) that are completely incomprehensible, we also have a price structure that's treated like a trade secret while also being a work of fiction. My medical expenses for the last year were billed at 4x the amount that was actually paid by my insurance company.

No, they're simply not linked. That other people need stuff is a fact. I'm not averse at all to society helping out people with genuine need. My personal viewpoint is that my place in the world is just a moment in time. I as well as my family and friends could be in very different circumstances in the future. For that matter, some of my family are really not well off anyway. I just disagree with the notion that because a subset of people can't provide something for themselves, we should have the government provide it for everybody. There's another option, that being provide it for just the people who can't provide it for themselves who actually want it.

Homeless people need somewhere to live, but that doesn't mean the government should start building houses and assign everyone one. Some people don't have food, but I don't want a government ratio crate on my doorstep every week. I want the right to pick my own provider, and the right to fire them when they do a bad job.

People always say that, yet I have extended family in Canada who aren't happy with health care there.

I'm expecting exactly what I said. Single payer means if that single payer screws it up, you don't have an alternative to jump ship. Sometimes the government does a good job at things. Sometimes they don't. I'm just choosing not to indulge in the naivete that some wish to and believe that giving a job to government automatically means it'll be done well.

Really, if single payer is so wonderful, just let people opt in to Medicare for $amount. There's no need to conscript every living person in the US to go with you if they don't want to.

10th graders are taught not to use Google because Google spies on them.

What force do you propose to enforce these regulations?