In my personal opinion, when it comes to paying my doctor, I'd rather have one where the bar to entry is quite high. The amount of time, money, and risk involved in being a doctor means that the reward needs to be equally high. My father's a surgeon. He was 35 before he was finished with school and began working. He had incurred several hundred thousand dollars in debt before seeing a dime. What this means is the system in place has a built in mechanism for weeding out those who are just in it for the money. There are better, safer ways to make more money. The LAST thing I'd want to see is the level of skill required to become a doctor being lowered because there is less competition in the field.

I know you didn't ask my opinion, but if they really want to fix our healthcare crisis, one HUGE step forward would be limiting medical malpractice lawsuits. My dad pays over 50% of his income to malpractice insurance, and he's never had a lawsuit brought against him.

Then again, I'm one of those kooks that believes socialism of any kind breeds mediocrity. If the reward for success disappears, the drive for excellence does as well.

As to how a national healthcare would perform, all I can say is how can you think they'll treat you any better than they do our veterans? Have you ever seen a VA hospital? Keep in mind, our VA in New Orleans is STILL shut down from Katrina.