A public health scheme for the US?

The New Republic Online editorialises about
the need for a US universal health care system that guarantees every US
citizen access to affordable medical care. Alone among wealthy
countries, the US has 16% of its population- 46 million people - without
health insurance:

'Studies ... suggest that thousands
of people, maybe even tens of thousands, die prematurely every year
because they don't have health insurance. And even those who don't
suffer medical consequences face financial and emotional pain, as when
seniors choose between prescriptions and groceries - or when families
choose between the mortgage and hospital bills'.

Medical care in the US is

'...inequitable
and inefficient. The US pays more for its health care than any other
nation... 16% of our national wealth.... That's an exorbitant cost ...
But, perversely, our extra spending doesn't seem to buy us better
medical care. According to virtually every meaningful statistic...
Americans are no healthier (and ... frequently unhealthier) than the
citizens of countries with universal health care'.

'To
conservatives, ...the private sector can deliver health insurance better
than the public sector. But the only benefits the program delivers
effectively, it seems, are enormous subsidies to insurance companies.
But the Medicare drug benefit is just a taste of things to come. The
right's real hope for health care is to radically transform health
insurance altogether, so that risk is gradually transferred ... onto
individuals'.

And:

'Insurance works best
when large numbers of people share risk, so that modest premiums from a
large number of healthy people cover the very high medical costs
incurred, at any one time, by just a few. Enacting the conservative
agenda would unravel such arrangements, shifting the burden of paying
for care back from the healthy to the sick. The worst-off would be those
left to buy insurance on their own, directly from insurance carriers
rather than through their employers or the government, since they will
be at the mercy of underwriters who screen out bad medical risks.

Providing
health insurance is a job the public sector has already proved it can
do very well. The most popular health insurance plan in the US is
Medicare-which, except for the drug benefit and a few HMOs that contract
for the business, is a government-run health care program. And Medicare
isn't only popular. It's also efficient'.

'Nearly all of the
money that goes into the program, via taxes and the premiums seniors
pay, goes back out to purchase actual medical services. Private
insurance, by contrast, inevitably diverts a much... which means less
money for the beneficiaries. In theory, insurance companies should be
competing to provide their subscribers with the best, most
cost-effective medical care. In practice, they compete over who can
enroll the healthiest patients, ...the surest way to improve profit
margins'.

'Government isn't the best way to provide all Americans
with health security. It's the only way. And it's time for liberalism
to say so openly'.