The present strain falls mainly on middle and upper middle class. This is the Wa-Po, giving sustenance to the Dems as usual.
Even their goofball professors of economics haven't done anything outside academia, and most of the economic gurus use the PFA theory--Plucked From Air.
The only country where i read state health care was working was Austria. At that time they had about 9-10 million people, and the reason it worked was that EVERYBODY, even those on unemployment had to pay something for their health care. That is probably the reason Arnold liked Obamacare. He and others don't understand that administering health care for 10 mil is a tad different from administering for over 300 mil.
Only imagine if a Repub comes up with a plan (Cain) that would actually make everyone responsible for the govt. goodies they get. You could hear the P-witch howling without aid of TV.
vaudine
I heard a different story from a friend of mine about Austria. I can't guarantee it's true, but he was talking to a wealthy Austrian business associate. What he said was that there was an explicitly two-tiered system. If you took the public route, there was definite rationing. If you paid an additional amount for private insurance, the care was much better. The example he gave was of someone getting a cancer diagnosis. In the lower tier, he'd be told that a bed might be available in a month or so, several hundred miles away. If he paid for the extra insurance, there'd be one nearby open in a few days.
I may have it wrong, but there's the germ of an idea here. Why not recognize that resources for medical delivery aren't infinite? Let's agree to provide a basic level of care, and if you want more, you pay for it. Face it, not everyone can afford a liver like Steve Jobs (although unfortunately it didn't save him).