Obama and healthcare reform, what's going on?

[Theta Omega]

Sat here in my lovely cosy country with a National Health Service (which is far from perfect, but hey) and through the marvel of the internets I've been getting little snippets of what Obama seems to be doing with healthcare in the US, at least enough to know it's got Faux news and certain youtubers hyped up.

I am tempted to make a video on the subject but will admit I am in a state of bewildered ignorance, and don't want to speak on subjects I have no understanding of.

I was just wondering what the system is currently in the US, what Obama is proposing, what people's opinions are, the arguments for and against what Obama is doing, and what the best third option is (because there is always one.)
Am I right in thinking that there is some remnant despise for the word "socialist" in America?
And why is America ranked 37 in the world for Healthcare, when several countries with some sort of universal healthcare are ranked higher?
(UK is 18th)
http://www.photius.com/rankings/healthranks.html
(No idea how old this is, or whether the fact that healthcare is universal bumps it up the rankings.)

[MrBogosity]

The system is a bizarre two-headed monster, one of socialism and one of corporatism. Government currently pays half of all the health care dollars, so they're pretty much even. The rest is government protecting the profits of pharmaceutical companies, HMOs, and health care conglomerates.

I have no doubt that even pure socialist health care is better than socialist & corporatist health care, but that doesn't mean that's what we should be doing, especially with many countries with socialized medicine moving away from it and to more private models to deal with the failings in their system.

The free market hasn't had much opportunity to work in health care, but where it has been allowed it has worked spectacularly.

[Lord T Hawkeye]

John Stossel did a huge news story on the whole topic.  He even showed some private clinics where you can go and see the doctor for 49$, sometimes even as low as 39$.  Perfectly reasonable.

Doctors up here in Canada are trying to fight to open private clinics because they've had it up to here with dealing with the buracracy and it's really disheartening to see that not only is government getting in their way, the people are too believe it or not!

"No!  If you start private clinics, it will allow rich people to pay to get ahead of the line!"

-_-  What are these people thinking? Seriously...

[Travis Retriever]

"No!  If you start private clinics, it will allow rich people to pay to get ahead of the line!"

Because that's what happens everytime something is made private, amirite?

-_-  What are these people thinking? Seriously...

That's the problem:  They're not thinking.

[11mc22]

There is a topic for this in the future episodes
I went over the WHO rankings