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What is the difference between Obamacare and other state-owned healthcare?

I'm a Brit and trying to work out what the healthcare is going to be changed to soon in America. As far as I can tell it's far different from what its like here in European countries, such as the NHS in Britain. So could anyone who understands how healthcare works in different countries please explain what the difference is between Obamacare and other state-owned healthcare?

Public Comments

1. It's not state owned. The health care reform just passed by the Senate is really insurance reform. The new health care rules aren't complete until the House & Senate Conference writes the final bill, but the idea is if you don't have health insurance, the government will charge a tax penalty and use that tax to pay insurance premiums for you. I think our system may be more similar to the Swiss system. We do have state owned health care in the USA - it's called "The Veteran's Administration" or VA. In the VA, Government owns the hospitals, hires the doctors and nurses, and chooses the treatments. BTW, how many veterans do you know who are begging to get out of the VA and get on a private for-profit insurance plan? Those of us who have looked around a little have noticed that not only do Canadians, British, French, German, Spanish, Greek, Italian, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish, and Swiss citizens pay *much* less than US citizens for health care, they also have longer life expectancies. We are wondering how we can get off our insane cost curve, and onto your cost curve. See http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0004393.html for mortality and life expectancy. See http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/46/33/38979719.pdf for costs. ----------- update ----------- Aisha: can you post links to support your claim? Or are you just parroting some lie Rush Limbaugh told? .
2. Obama care will be socialized medicine. The only difference is between the Brit plan and the Obama plan is that the government will have access to your 401K, savings, retirement accounts. The Democrats can clean out your money whenever they want.
3. Both House and Senate bills are tax and regulation increases. They have little or nothing to do with healthcare.
4. No significant difference, "Obamacare" will simply reduce the average cost of health-care, extend life expectancies, and reduce infant mortality rates (so that all three of these basic measures are in line with the far better numbers Canadians & Britons enjoy). The folks who WILL suffer severely from this are the insurance & health care industry "middle managers" in the US, who will be out of a job....and them getting fired won't create any vacancies because in reality they weren't actually doing anything...