The reason we have superior healthcare treatments is because we have better schools, research institutions and oh yeah, NIH, which is one government agency that actually lives up to it's mission quite well.

If the private health insurance companies were also research centers, or funneled the majority of their profits into research, I could see the "people come from all over the world" argument holding some water. But it doesn't otherwise.

The BIG issue, as CI hinted at, is that because of the nature of our insurance system, people typically don't use their benefits for preventative care, and benefits don't often cover preventative measures. We wait until we are sick and seek treatment. Ounce of prevention, pound of cure.

It gets REALLY expensive when you have the uninsured just show up to the emergency room. I worked at NYP, the biggest hospital in NYC. The emergency rooms at both hospitals in the system were awful, despite the top notch care available, because they are constantly over capacity with the uninsured or people who avoided care until there was a serious problem.

We're not even talking about single payer right now anyway. The current plan addresses shady insurance practices and offers a public option. How is that "socialist"? If the private market can't compete, they'll have to change. Is that a bad thing?

Personally, I'd like to see all health insurance plans, public or private, require an annual physical and doctor's consultation about health status. A lot of conditions could be caught early and treated with lifestyle changes instead of drugs.