In order to bring down the cost of health care, the government would have to operate the system more efficiently than the market does. I can't think of anything the government operates more efficiently than the market does.
I'll grant you that the private sector is more efficient than the government sector in the vast majority of cases. The health care insurance system is not one of them.
Both Canada and Britain have gov't health programs. 25% of the people in Canada wait 6 months or more for surgery, in Britain that number is higher. In the US, only 5% wait that long. The waiting time for an MRI in Canada is 10 weeks.
Then you haven't met enough people.
> The poor are already covered by social programs.
That's a joke I hope, but it isn't at all true. Social programs tend to only cover emergency care. If you get cancer and you're poor, you're fucked and doomed to a slow death because emergency rooms don't do chemotherapy. Anything that requires treatment but isn't immediately emergency life or death and you're screwed. Do you actually know many poor people?
Ezra Klein knows what he's talking about (though he is coming from a pro-reform standpoint).