I drop out for a few days, and come back to the Putin debate still raging (because Dope can't admit when he's wrong...or at least not so far as I've read). But this is a good topic!

It's an excellent argument. If everyone in the room says you're drunk, believe them, you're drunk.

Yep. Good analogy.

U.S. life expectancy is ranked 48th in the world, behind almost every other OECD country.

Haven't read all the replies, so maybe someone else covered this. But, to be fair, there are a lot of factors affecting life expectancy. I don't think we can ignore the sedentary lifestyle (I'm guilty too!), and bad diet of the typical USian. The Japanese diet, for example, is vastly different than ours, with a lot more seafood. And most aren't as reliant on the automobile, so people do a lot of walking in other countries. So, while your statement is perfectly accurate, there is a lot of stuff to unpack in that statistic. It's not just that we don't have UHC, even if that may be one factor in that statistic.

You guys don’t want socialized medicine.

You bet we do.

Yes, we do. I know someone who is on Medicare and Medicaid. When she goes to the doctor, she almost never gets a bill. Not even a copay. She couldn't afford to go to the doctor if it were any other way. I'll spare you her life story, but she was poor her whole life and had little savings. She had to have a surgery a few years ago, without which she would have died in agony. I believe it was covered with $0 out of pocket for her.

That's how medicine should be.