Oh, and one other major myth you cling to...
...is this idea that somehow if everyone get free regular checkups as
they should, that they will start living healthier lives and require
less expensive care down the road.
This is myth on several levels; the 1st being that most health care
dollars are spent on the final months of life, regardless of how old
someone is. The 2nd is that the effects of obesity and diabetes are
more expensive to treat than the diseases that those who avoid
obesity and diabetes will eventually get in their place in old age.
(cancer, althzhiemers, etc, unless we actually will be using "death
panels"...)
And the 3rd myth is that somehow people will simply live healthier
because they get to go to the dr for "free". But that seems to be
your optimistic viewpoint, in that you also believe that if only we
had more sidewalks, then people would start walking more and driving
less.
In fact, I fear the opposite; free health care will actually
encourage people to be less healthy, just as the success of anti-
virals have encouraged the return to unsafe sexual practices as AIDS
is no longer seen as the death sentence it was 20 years ago. If
people won't go on a diet, there will be free medication and
surgeries to fix the problem.
