Can nationalized health care work?

Of course it can. Even in Canada and the U.K., always held up by conservatives as failures, the people would never trade their systems for a U.S. style system. That's how bad ours actually is. Personally I like the Swiss health system the best and think it could probably work here but overall I believe the French have the highest satisfaction with their health care so theirs is worth looking into. Regardless, things WILL change with health care in the U.S. and that's a good thing.

Tired: Don't worry, when we cut the defense budget in half and raise your taxes we won't be broke anymore.

Tired: The constitution calls for the government to provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States. That can be interpreted to mean different things to different people. To me, providing quality health care meets the "general welfare" function of the government. You might say that that the founders didn't mean that, but then I might say that they also didn't mean to keep a giant standing army and attack foreign nations that pose no threat to us. Besides, if you would actually look into many of these "socialized medicine" plans, you would see that many of them use a combination of public and private money to fund them. And all of them cost less than our current system. You're the one that needs to be informed.

It will be interesting to see how they answer this. The Treasury Secretary announced today Medicare will be broke in 2017, so how in the hell do they propose expanding it to cover everyone?

Hey Smug, don't know if you picked up a newspaper lately....The USA is BROKE. There is no money!

Smug, you are a not informed. You could eliminate the military, and confiscate every penny from everyone making over $250,000 a year, it STILL not enough to pay for what the government is spending..Also read your constitution, defense is a legitimate function of government, providing health care is NOT!

Nationalized health care will never work as it is inefficient, corrupt, and low-quality. Why would a qualified, smart person go into a field (pay hundreds of thousands for Medical school) where they will make minuscule amounts of money? It isn't rocket science. The people in health care will be unqualified and crappy and the entire system will be horrific. We currently have the best health care system in the world and if we nationalize it, then there is no going back.