+100 to Emily
The difference between "insurance" and "Healthcare" is somewhat akin to the difference between "Learning" and "Being Taught". Some people are completely incapable of "learning", no matter how much they are taught.
And Melissa is right of course - it's absolutely vital that we need to be able to see the doctor the moment we define the need. It's un-American that we should suffer a sore throat for a couple of days until it (gasp) goes away by itself. I mean just look at those countries where socialized medicine is in place - why they're all walking around with pink eye, open wounds, suppurating pustules, cancer, and untended rheumatoid arthritis, because they can't get to the doctor quickly enough, even i they do have overactive bladder.
Much better to be in a system where the drug companies advertise openly to patients, where doctors over-prescribe drugs and tests for fear of being sued, where communities are without access to specialties because of liability insurance and where it's perfectly OK to advertise (and take) Tylenol for arthritis "pain" (and hence - allow one to continue ramping up the joint destruction by using the diseased joint).
OK enough with the sarcasm. It's giving me restless brain syndrome. The sad thing is that people speak as if there is no scope for private medicine in a public system and this is of course Republican fear-mongering bullshit. Does anyone honestly think that there would be no doctors willing to make extra $$$ by tending privately to those wealthy enough or stupid enough to demand being seen ahead of the "queue"? Wow sorry I think you must have forgotten this is America. There is private medicine in every country where there's a public system. The main difference I see is that those without jobs, their children, people in shitty little minimum wage jobs, the disabled, seniors, those with long term conditions etc ad nausem would get healthcare and proper follow-up prescription meds without worrying about the cost.
Now, some would argue that it's wrong for the government to raise the funding for this through taxation because yes, that's where the money would have to come from. I believe the opposite. I believe that this is exactly the sort of thing taxation should be spent on, because it takes tax gathered and uses it for the good of everyone in the country, rich or poor, black or white, Faithful or Aethiest, simply because they are Americans. I do firmly believe that much of the money could come from a reduction in military spending and neo-colonial adventurism (how much would we save by closing the base in Okinawa that's been in the news recently for example - the Japanese don't want it there - how would we be reacting if this was , say a Russian base in, say, Georgia?). I also believe that it should never be the responsibility of employers to pay for an employee's healthcare, because this does cost jobs in the end.
THe trouble in my mind with the present highly polarized argument is that in the end it denies that we are any sort of society whatsoever and illustrates a failure to move beyond the frontier mentality of grab, hold and fear. Itis not that I don't see these arguments, I just completely disagree with them. It's so selfish to treat one's fellow humans as if we had no collective responsibility -fuck, people, even hyaenas treat their pack-mates better than that.