The Health Care industry as a whole needs to be reformed, that's a given... I don't think there is anyone who really doubts that or disagrees.
The problems here are
1. No widespread tort reform for healthcare. Doctors are in constant worry about being sued by a disgruntled patient, so they have to raise their cost for care in order to offset the rising malpractice insurance costs
2. Because the doctors raise their costs to meet the rising malpractice insurance, private insurance companies have to be more selective about who they allow coverage. They also attempt to pay doctors less for reimbursement of services than what the doctors are charging. Generally this is done in the form of the insurance company working out a contract with the provider (hospital, medical group, individual doctor) and deciding on a contracted rate for individual services. If an insurance company is unwilling to provide adequate compensation for services rendered, the provider can elect to simply not accept their insurance as a form of payment.
3. Outside of the realm of private insurance, you have MediCare/MediCaid, who have steadily been dropping the amount of money that they'll reimburse for services, leaving doctors either having to bill elderly patients for the remainder, simply dealing with the fact that the government isn't willing to pay much and then writing the rest off, or patients have to get a secondary insurance to cover the rest.
When you put all of these factors into play together, you get the situation that we're in right now. Doctors want to be compensated for their time spent in school, their expertise, and the time taken to render care to a patient. Insurance companies want to make a profit, and that leads to them offering to pay less for services than ever. Then you have the government, who simply can't sustain MediCare/MediCaid, so they pay less and less, and yet doctors are required by law to see patients covered by them.
The current system is thoroughly unsustainable at the rate that we're going. MediCare is going to be bankrupt within this century, especially now that the baby boomers are starting to hit 65+. Malpractice insurance costs are going to continue to rise, wages for ancillary staff (receptionists, nurses, etc.) are going to continue to increase, so the providers are going to have to keep raising their charges to keep up, and then the insurance companies are going to offer to pay less and less so that they keep their profit margins.
What is the solution? I'm by no means an expert... but I'm willing to bet that I have a much better understanding than a lot of people. I believe the solution starts with tort reform... limit malpractice cases substantially, and that will lower premiums on malpractice insurance. The next step is massive insurance reform... require companies to accept more patients, but also raise the amount of money that they pay back to the provider for compensation for services. They'll be paying more to the doctors, so the doctors will be more willing to lower their charges because of lower malpractice insurance premiums, and higher payouts back from the insurance companies. Lastly, because providers are going to be more willing to accept more insurance companies in their practices, the overall health of the insurance industry will go up, because they'll be able to insure more people due to the fact that they have more customers, and doctors have lowered their charges because of the reduced other costs.
If you talk to most physicians, they'll more than likely agree that this plan is wholly more palatable than anything else currently on the table. They all know that the system needs change and reform, and they pretty much all know that ObamaCare isn't the answer either. If the federal government is incapable of running MediCare, why do we think that they'd have any better luck with a national health care?
What ObamaCare really boils down to is that this isn't in the least bit about reforming health care, not even close. This is about control. If they can control your health care, then they can theorhetically tell you that you can't smoke, that you can't drink, that you can't do this that or the other thing because it would affect the ability to medically insure you. Oh, you want to have a cheeseburger? I'm sorry, cholesterol levels are too high, please make another selection. That's the direction that we would be headed with a nationalized health care. They could then technically tell doctors in medical school what specialty they should go into, because specialty X is needed more than specialty Y, so while you'd rather go into Y, you have to go into X instead.
The Democrats are all about control here... they want people to be wholly dependent on the government for their everyday needs. Thus making them more powerful and keeping them in office and in power. Republicans aren't necessarily a whole lot better, they support big businesses over the citizens in a lot of ways, but they (historically anyway, not recently) fiscally conservative, and until the 9/11 attack, the Patriot Act, and all of that bullshit, anti-big government.
That being said, I'm very glad Gov. Perry (while I didn't vote for him while I lived in Texas) has taken the stand that they'll try and thwart ObamaCare under the 10th Amendment... and that other states seem to be following suit. Health Care is not a "right" as prescribed by the constitution; therefore, why is the federal government attempting to provide it and force people to have their coverage?
The system needs change and reform, but it doesn't need government involvement outside of tort and insurance reform. The government doesn't need to become a health care provider... we can't even keep a balanced budget, fund social security or medicare (both programs that aren't part of the power delegated to the federal government by the constitution anyway), so that shouldn't be extended any further. If they can't run an existing health care program correctly, what makes anybody think that they'll be able to run another one, on a far larger scale?
For there being no real difference, why do you spend all of your time arguing one side?
