[ScottyS]

I guess when I say "actual cost", I mean the real monetary costs of a government managed/mandated system. I forget that most people never think beyond the out of pocket + some vague notion of tax increase. This includes total funding costs of all bureaucracies involved and additional tax burden on the population, and most importantly feedbacks along different tax demographics (e.g. if they pull most of these extra taxes from middle-class and up, how will those various economic agents modify their behavior to pass the costs down the line?). All of which actually would take some fairly sophisticated economic modeling to work out, and then probably not even be accurate (I did get a minor in the subject, after all).

When I say "given same quality", I essentially mean maintaining or exceeding the quality of *necessary* care that now exists in the U.S.. I cannot speak for other countries such as France, I only spent 3 months there and it was not enough time for me to require various levels of medical assistance that would allow for proper evaluation. I can, however, evaluate the *necessary* care available here, having had 2 knee surgeries, one facial surgery, some medium-grade dental work, and various fractures and whatnot. When considering this, you basically have to pretend as if today's doctors will all be retired, and that a new generation will be brought in under the new system, and consider the levels of motivation, expertise, and work ethics that will be present. Again, it WILL be different than now, but how much and in which direction is the $64k question.

It is a large enough chunk of the economy that no matter what you do there will be huge feedbacks on the rest of the system. A hypothetically-successful socialized medical system is highly dependent upon how the rest of that government and economy function.

No doubt, this is another case of trying to solve the world's problems over coffee - ain't gonna happen, as all you can do is debate from a general principle point of view. Instead, we need to rely on our political "leadership" to spend the time, money, and have the interest and intelligence to properly evaluate the problem from all angles before acting - I mean, we are the best at rocket science, right? But, why do I get the feeling that this is less about "health care" and more about simple governmental expansion, with big paydays for all the cats involved? The majority have plenty to gain from advancing their agenda, and the opposition gets to rile everyone up, hopefully with a payday down the line........no, I don't believe our modern government is capable of pulling this off at all, let alone the powers that they were originally charged with in the Constitution.