The NHS & the United States of America

[Loyal Rogue]

At a lower quality than they could receive in the US.

Oops, you forgot to put the qualifier on your statement again...

At a lower quality than they could receive in the US if every one of them were millionares.

There, fixed it.

See that's one of the problems in the arguments you try to use.
Overall quality of care for everyone cannot be judged by the quality care that only the wealthiest can afford, just as the overall quality of health of the population cannot be judged strictly on the basis of one or two narrow types of cancer while completely ignoring every other factor and health problem.

We don't currently have normal competition in the health insurance industry. You can't even buy insurance from across state lines, allowing many companies to establish local monopolies.

The major reason we don't have true competition in the industry is because that's the way the insurance companies have used their influence to write the laws.
They don't want competition.
They are the ones that create monopolies by spending billions buying legislation that allows them to takeover or force out any competition just like they are doing now to the public insurance option.

Some do have no choice, true. But, it's simply a matter of fact that a lot of the uninsured choose not to be covered. It's not at the expense of light bills or groceries but ipods and sneakers.

Nonsense. That is nothing more than a ridiculous republican talking point.
This is the same hogwash tactic that was used by the Reagan administration for the idea of "welfare queens".

That's not reporting based on statistics. That's hearsay. We don't know who these experts are, what their methodology was or if they even had one at all.
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And this article describes the opposite trend while specifying a source:
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Interesting. I don't recall posting a link regarding that point in the past. But, I have now. I suppose you will also think that McKinsey & Co. are part of the vast right-wing conspiracy as well.

A dodgy "study" (that statstically ignores 98% of medical travelers) by a giant corporate consulting firm in a business magazine run by a conservative, supply-side, rightwing republican politician?... yes, I can see where some might be a little skeptical about the motive, methods, and math behind it.

All conspiring, collusion, and marketing damage-control aside, just looking at the numbers that McKinsey throws out there should send up a huge red flag to anyone who's read more than that single article.
Considering that by all other estimates, worldwide medical travelers already number in the millions, the fact that Forbes would state about the study that "It narrowly defined medical travelers as only those whose primary and explicit purpose in traveling was to obtain in-patient medical treatment in a foreign country, putting the total number of travelers at 60,000 to 85,000 per year." just shows that they are twisting the numbers from the get go.

Let's take a moment to look at a single but HUGE statistical error in your "study".
McKinsey only counted in-patient procedures while ignoring the fact that the vast majority of medical travel is not for in-patient procedures.
Dental is one of the main forms of health insurance that Americans can't afford and accounts for up to 40% of all medical travel from the US to foreign countries.
None of that is in-patient so was not counted in McKinsey's "study".
Neither were any procedures such as eye surgery, cataract removal, corneal transplant, lasik, hip replacement, knee replacement, tumor removal, cancer treatments, esophageal surgery, colon/rectal surgery, diverticulosis, ear surgey, cochlear implants, or most other forms of surgery on ear/nose/throat or extremities all of which are considered out-patient procedures.
According to the National Center for Health Statistics at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2006 two-thirds (15 million) of all surgeries in the US were out-patient procedures.
So looking at across-the-board surgeries according to the CDC, McKinsey's so-called "study" ignores at least two-thirds of all surgeries.
And that's before McKinsey even starts to massage the rest of the numbers by only using data from a very small percentage of wordwide hospitals that only belong to a particular accrediting body (50) while ignoring all other in-patient procedures done at the thousands upon thousands of other hospitals, surgery centers, and clinics around the world.

So from the beginning, out of the estimated 5 million worldwide medical travelers, the McKinsey "study" pretends that more than 98% (4.9 million) don't even exist.
So out of the 2% left, they further state that 40% of those travelers are the wealthy ones that don't care about cost or distance and just want the very best that money can buy (because they can afford it).
The article further states that of that 40%, "Most of those patients in search of the best care" are going to the US.

So to recap Forbes and McKinsey, "most" of less than half of 2% of medical travelers are headed for the United States.

That may be one of the best examples of the old adage that "Figures don't lie, but liars figure" that I have ever seen.

Now that I think about it, it becomes very apparent why you would be attracted to that particular article.
It uses language and reasoning very similar to your own arguments.

a new report points out that the largest segment of medical travelers are headed stateside.

Ooops, seems they forgot to add the qualifier to that statement also...

a new report points out that the largest segment of less than 1% of medical travelers are headed stateside.

There, fixed.