There's also the old adages "don't fix what isn't broken" and "you can't argue with success"! <SNIP> Kind of reminds me of Obama and his healthcare plan now that I think of it!
Kevin
I'm with you on the DS9 Relaunch jump, but I cannot even
begin to comprehend how you could possibly imply that the American health care system is
not broken or is successful.
40 million Americans at any given time cannot afford health insurance. Those who
can afford health insurance
routinely face incredibly flimsy excuses automatic denials of coverage for any treatment that's deemed too expensive. Americans have a lower life expectancy, higher infant mortality rate, and an overall lower set of health care outcomes than that of any country making use of some sort of universal, single-payer health care.
And speaking from my own experience, I can tell you that if you're poor and you get really sick, you're royally screwed. Several years ago, my mother almost
died because she knew something was wrong but could not afford regular, preventative health care because she lacked insurance. So when she experienced major pain in her abdomen after having worked a 9 hour shift on her feet, she went into the E.R., who promptly told her that she needed to travel to the hospital of a neighboring city because there was a giant pocket of infection on her right kidney that would kill her within a day or two if it wasn't immediately removed. She then spent two weeks in the hospital and another six out of work in recovery. Had she waited just a day or so longer out of an attempt to avoid spending money, she likely would have died, and as it was, we couldn't afford the bill -- forcing the hospital, of course, to pass their loss onto
other patients.
The bottom line is that the United States spends more for inferior health outcomes, and all the while the poor have much less access to health care than anyone else in a discriminatory system. The American health care system is broken, and only someone who's never been screwed over by an insurance company or never been sick while poor could think it isn't.