Whenever anyone proposes universal healthcare in the US, I tell them two stories:

1) My aunt is an oncology nurse in a major city. A high percentage of her patients are from Canada, because they can get treated here for their cancer, and are unable to get those treatments in Canada (or can't get them in a timely manner). Of course, these are only the patients who can afford to pay it out of pocket or have supplemental health insurance.

2) My dad developed a rare lung disease and was treated by the VA (which is government run healthcare for veterans of the US Armed Forces). They determined he needed a lung transplant to survive. It took them 18 months to run the tests necessary to determine if he was a candidate for a transplant, and due to the progressive nature of the disease, by the time they were done running their tests, a panel in DC determined he was no longer a viable candidate for a transplant, and sent him off to die[1]. As a last-ditch effort, he reached out to Mayo Clinic, who agreed to see him. They ran the same tests in 3 days, and determined that he was a candidate for a transplant. He got a new lung, and lived for three more years. I strongly suspect the delay in treatment cut his life short, but I'm not a doctor.

I do not want universal healthcare.

[1] People make fun of Sarah Palin and her "death panels", but they're a very real thing no matter what they're called.

RE: #1 so a system that works similarly to ours today (if you can afford better health care, you get better health care) that ALSO helps those who can't afford even basic healthcare... is somehow worse than what we have today? You lost me.

Also, I don't think a person on the face of the planet has suggested that the VA would be a good system to model nationalized health care on.

The cost of US healthcare is also what made it possible for the rest of the world to afford cheap healtcare. The US does the vast majority of the R&D and everyone else benefits.

And the US don't benefit from having the largest pharma companies?

> The quality of care for those who are covered in the US is unrivalled.

I would be interested in more specifics about this. It's hard to find statistics that provide a clear comparison of quality between healthcare systems.