Sen. Sanders says Fox's Sullivan is pushing "bogus argument" regarding Canadian health care system

Wow. I hope you have some recourse with AT&T. Are you able to get any healthcare now? We wish you the best.

I spoke recently to a pharmacist, married to someone else in the health care industry, so one would expect (as they expected of themselves) that they would know the system, and they had health insurance. Their child got MRSA, resulting in $300,000 of medical bills that took them a decade to pay off. It's crazy that that's where we are in this country with health care.

I lived in Europe while in college for about 14 months. Great access to health care while there, after having been repeatedly denied care in this country by the insurance company I was covered under through my parents. I would get approval for treatment, then two weeks later, denied again. Never an issue in Europe.

First, the insurance companies need the competition coming from a non-profit plan such as one run by the government.

Second, claiming it's in business' self interest to compete misses the last fifty years of business practices in this country. The insurance and pharma companies know that the key to their profits is actually cooperation. They learned this from big oil, among others. That way, they can each provide the same crappy service at the same over-inflated price. How else do you explain skyrocketing costs and diminishing coverage?

"It is in business' self interest to supply the best product for the most competitive price."

Uh-huh ... just like it was in Bernie Madoff's best interest to invest his client's money in a responsible manner?

Here's the fatal flaw in free-marketeerism -- there's always more money to be made by screwing your customers than can be made by serving them.

That would have been a better argument about twenty years ago, which I think was when it was last used to justify the shift to HMO's. Unfortunately for you, it's an idea with a history and not one that came out as you imply. In fact, it lead to a higher percentage of uninsured as well as exponential increases in health care costs. The only interest business has is profit, and that is directly in opposition to providing adequate health care to the rest of us. I think anybody who even casually read the initial comment would recognize that it wasn't about who was or wasn't 'qualified' to talk about Canadian health care, it was about the simple fact that in any large system of health care, whether it be public or private, there are flaws. Frankly, if the alternative is no health care, and for many it is exactly that (try to get health care when you're unemployed and have a pre-existing condition, you'll most likely find you can't even get any let alone find some that is even remotely affordable), the fact that every now and again the system doesn't work exactly as intended is a minor point that can be corrected. We spend more per capita than any other nation on healthcare, yet the quality of what we get is poorer than that found in most other western industrialized nations and one in five is without insurance altogether. That's not something to be proud of. Frankly, if it came down to choosing to have either the government or an insurance company decide what treatments are available to whom (and it does...), I'll take the government. At least they aren't making decisions about who is treated and who is not based on how much profit they'd like to see this quarter. Not only that, but providing a single-payer system would also do a great deal to allow American companies to be more competitive by removing the burden of health care from them and allowing them to compete with other nations where health care costs are not part of employee compensation.

What you suggest has already been tried and has failed miserably, hence our current problem. Time to take a look at what actually works for the rest of the world.

Ins lobby says "Public Option hurts Free Market". Nothing Free Market about Insurance Oligarchy sanctioned by Govt to loot Captive Customers. Current state does not permit meaningful choice. Every area has a couple of dominant companies. They understand that in an inelastic market the best road to profits is collusion.
If the Gov run option is inefficient & less patient friendly, it should be easy to compete with it. The reason the Insurance Oligarchs are trying to scare the public is to preserve their Govt protection.

"The cheapest and easiest way to reform healthcare is to open the market up, because it is in business' self interest to supply the best product for the most competitive price."

You've got to be kidding me. I didn't know they still made you - I thought you went the way of the Beta-Max.

This is the same argument we have been hearing for two generations in the country. We cannot have nationalized healthcare like the rest of the world because we will keep costs down and get better care if the free market decides. All these years later we have worse care, more people uninsured, and the prices continue to double and triple.

Do you really not see this? What do you think we have been doing that is causing this system to get worse and worse? We keep allowing HMOs and their lobbyists to sell us a bill of goods about the free market. Wake up.