Another great post Justin...keep at it...and throw some hard numbers in too... Actually, I'd like to read a consideration on the economic impact for implementing a system like Canada's. Say for example the current work force in the health care system, how would they be impacted in a transition if the US were to switch systems (oh how I wish)?.

That's an argument Dick and his ilk would use to really scare the crap out of the electorate: 'OMG, you'd all be out of work, all standing in soup lines with no hope at all.' Thoughts?

"I don't want to spend my day debating health care with Dick Armey, especially since, as noted previously, I don't really know what I'm talking about. "

You don't really need to know that much about health care to know that Armey is full of it. And I still waiting for you, or Klein, or Carney or ANYONE to demand that Armey provide a cite for his '11% of health care costs go to regulations" thing...

Just call him "Strelnikov"!

Here's the correct link for your quote from Klein:

http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/tapped_archive?month=06&year=2007&base_name=post_3874#016790

I think, if anything, Klein is too generous to Armey. There is no conceivable way that Armey's 11% claim makes sense, at least not in his second formulation that "For every $100 Americans spend on health care, we pay $11 to the regulator." As I commented last time, at $2 trillion a year in health care costs, that would be more that $200 billion a year that Americans are paying to "the regulator". Or in other words almost 2% of GDP. Or about 40% of non-defense discretionary federal spending. There just isn't any regulator in the US whose budget is anything approaching that. E.g. the FDA's budget is roughly a factor of 100 less.

Thanks, Crust. I fixed the link.