Like many European countries we basically have socialised medicine in Ireland. When the government get control of something it basically means queues! The good thing about the states is that of you are properly insured (cost is c. 50eur pm) you can get proper treatment in a timely fashion (not being put on a waiting list for years).
There is a limit to government -I mean would you go to a government controlled holiday resort? Oh, but think of all the poor people and vulnerable little children who never get to go on holiday... let's have government run holidays for everyone!
I think socialised healthcare should cover the minimum (medicare): but be wary of handing too much control over to big government. Even in Europe rich people still go to private clinics. Government healthcare is all well and good until you have to wait... and then the government doctors say they need to amputate your foot, and you think to yourself, wait a minute, if I even had halfway decent private insurance... would they be amputating my foot?
It's a numbers game: as it is in the States most people have access to good care, but under government run schemes, only the very rich benefit.
It has nothing to do with "government control," a single-payer system involves only the government paying the bill with private delivery of healthcare. A NHS-style system has never been suggested for the US, and actually, long wait times are due to specific aspects of the systems in the countries they occur - for instance in Canada it is not because there is no private healthcare, but due to a lack of fiscal coordination between state and the federal government. We don't have to replicate those effects for the US. And personally, I would rather essential services, essential human rights like healthcare were answerable to democracy via the government as opposed to the big private corporations controlling healthcare for their own profit without being accountable to the public.
Most people in the US do not have good quality health insurance; and furthermore, even those who have expensive plans find that the unregulated health insurance industry finds ways to cheat them out of providing coverage; private, capitalized medicine has killed, bankrupted and yes, caused wait times due to the huge amount of paperwork and hassle they provide to millions in my country.
Your insensitive, sick comments about the government paying for little children to go on holiday are out of place, and furthermore, snobbish; I personally wasn't able to see a dentist or get medical treatments (and thus suffered a lot) for much of my childhood because we had neither money nor insurance, so if you'd like a lack of care so much, why don't you leave Ireland and experience how good it is yourself? Everyone deserves full, good quality coverage, not only the wealthy (and especially in a time when the wealth and well being of most people is plummeting.) And single-payer systems provide good care to everyone, unlike private insurance, which is the system that only the wealthy benefit from.
:x:-*
