That quote about doctors in France is incorrect. There are more doctors, but the supply of doctors is restricted by the state governments. We’re looking for a free market system for health care . We’re against a fascist system that provides welfare for the corporations (HMOs, Hospital Management Corps., or Pharmaceuticals Corps.) or professional guilds (the AMA).

And in France, when the state pays for education, more people can afford to study and become doctors on tax payer dime. This is one of the many costs of a socialized system that doesn’t get factored into “per capital spending.”

It would be like claiming that North Koreans get plenty to eat since they are eating more food than inmates in Auschwitz, to use an extreme example.

You are correct that the failure of central planning that caused all those unneccessary deaths during that heat wave was due to misallocation of existing resources rather than the failure to invest sufficiently in developing adequate resources.

Of course, it’s a rum thing that the decision of a civil servant to go on vacation could doom thousands to agonizing and unnecessary deaths with no hope of escape.

There are more physicians per capita in France than in the US. What was missing in 2003 was a decision by the Minister of Health to start contigency measures (he decided to stay on vacation and said that all the warnings were exaggerations; see Hurricane Katrina for similar behaviour among US presidential appointees), as well as a general disbelief in French society that heat could kill (France has a temperate climate).

People should shop for heart surgery like they do for computers and oil changes. I mean, it’s just common sense.

While we’re at it, we need to transition the police, firefighters & military to a private fee-for-service system. No more of this USSR-style public service model!

And if you can’t afford it, you can die. It’s your fault for not making money.

Fairness is for sissies, communists & Canadians!

Neither are better than a true free market, but looking at the climate of the health care debate, I’d take it over anything resembling the UK or Canada. Or worse France.

But I have to say that from a cursory glance Obama’s policies look awful.

Anyone have a link on that study that shows that when homicide/auto crashes are controlled for, Americans live longer? That’d be a good bit of info to keep at the ready for future debates.

http://www.barackobama.com/issues/healthcare/

Doesn’t really matter if his proposal is less socialist than Edwards, the problem is that his proposal is still socialized medicine, and it doesn’t work. Under his plan the rot will just show up slower. So screw Obama and all the heat he’s taken from the leftists…he’s still more like a leftist than a libertarian.