Universal health care is not socialism (even if it is, who cares?)

This is a no-brainer and makes me crazy. I lived in Japan for years and years, I went to the doctor when I wanted, without an appointment and could go to any doctor I wanted to. I turned in my pink insurance card after the doctor was through with me and on average paid about $10.00 per visit (including medicine). Comparing this to the $40 I pay for visits in Los Angeles plus what I have to pay for medicine, which could easily be in the hundreds. I also went for a yearly physical, at no cost to me because Japanese politicians, companies and doctors understand that preventing me from getting sick saves everybody money in the long run and I get a long healthy life in the bargain. So what did you pay annually for your health insurance you ask? I paid about five percent of my income. So if you make 10G a month, you pay about five hundred bucks. If you make a grand, you’re in for fifty dollars. My insurance in the states costs $649.00 a month with a five thousand dollar deductible and although I can afford it, a lot of people couldn’t (as you have probably heard, Anthem raised my rates about 20% in May). In Japan what you pay is based on your income so everybody can afford it. By the way, the government runs health insurance in Japan and Japanese people have longer life spans and have a better quality of health than Americans. If we compare our system to other developed countries we find that America is the most expensive ($7,290 per capita compared to $3,601 in France) with the most uninsured (13.5%), the highest infant mortality rate (6.7 out of 1,000 live births compared to 3.8 in France) and a shorter average life span. Link >>>

Here is another chart comparing life spans vs price of health care. Just so you know Japanese people live to 83, go to the doctor on average once a month and live to about 83 years old on average while paying an average of $2,581 for their healthcare annually. Link >>>