The advantage of the free market is you don't have to inquire about of even care how much someone else makes. Do you care how much your grocer or auto insurer make? You shouldn't. The only issue is have you gotten what you paid for. If you don't get what you want from your health insurer (or health provider if you pay cash), then we probably need market reforms like making insurance portable or making it entirely separate from employment (and that was the BIG mistake).

BTW I am beginning to think about insurance for myself other than Medicare. I don't think Medicare can take care of my needs much longer.

As to “free markets” being a farce, try telling that to China, India, and Russia. Even Cuba is experimenting with letting farmers own their own land and profit from it.

Oh and by the way, my doctor doesn't support single payer at all. He agrees that we need to fix the system and fast, but not destroy it.

The “free-market” has always been a manipulated farce in any market… people are finally figuring that out and some people never will.

Like I said, don't listen to me, listen to the majority doctors/experts who support it.

As to the second point, don't fall into the same trap that Obama did – suggesting that doctors needlessly remove tonsils or amputate feet just to make more money. Those that do eventually are brought down – most often by insurance investigators. I'm not, nor have I ever suggested that insurance companies are “pure as the driven snow.” Just that as private companies there are legal, regulatory, and market pressures to keep them in tow.

Look, when the Government shows that it can meet its obligations administering the Indian Health Service, which has been a travesty for decades, I'll listen with interest.

BTW, doctors request MRI's not patients… if the doctor owns his own machine there's a financial incentive for him to request one.

http://bit.ly/ngdzU

As far as an expensive MRI machine, other countries with gov't run systems with similar economies and governments run those machines cheaper than we do now with less spent as a whole and less spent per person than what we pay here. NPR did a comparison with figures as recent as 2008.

A uniform single-payer option does away with the majority of bureaucracy… you don't have different criteria, limitations, variations on policy as you would with a number of different insurance agencies that a provider would have to deal with. People on Medicare report better coverage overall than with private insurance.

Thomas_James: I think its perspective, if you own a rental property, try renting that house out without a functioning water line, its illegal. Its the “right” of the renter to have access to potable and hot water, try not giving your child water to drink, you'll go to jail, its the “right” of the child. There's nowhere in the constitution that states we all shall pay for roads and fire service, what's your point? – that was rhetorical.

In the housing market, capitalism worked as a means to “serve people's needs” by approving everyone for houses and profiting on it… how'd that work out? – once again, rhetorical.