People keep saying "the healthcare system will be drastically different" in the USA sometime soon (b/c of Obama's plans I'm assuming)... I have a couple caveats to make:
1) If you look at the Canadian Health Care system you will see socialized, one-tier, universal, comprehensive, fee-for-service, first-dollar coverage of all medically necessary health care services. But, this does not cover dentistry, optometry, chiropractics, massage, etc. Only the core medical services... If you look at the NHS (National Health Service) in England, you will see that they have (arguably, a more robust) socialized medical system too, where they try and cover optometry and dental services. One thing you will note is that they are struggling to keep dental care in their country one-tier. Many dentists are abandonning the NHS and openning up their own private practice offering a 'second-tier' of service for those who can pay. Lesson here is that: it is hard to provide public funding for dentistry (ie. socializing dental care), so a lot of the fears many of you Americans talk about on these forums should be put at ease.
2) Change like this doesn't happy quickly. I don't know a lot of the specifics Obama has talked about, but there is a lot involved in making something like this feasible - you're not going to read in the paper tomorrow that everything has changed. Another important factor to remember is that many physicians (even in Canada - actually the Canadian Medical Association (CMA) believes that privitization of health care is the way to go) and I could only assume that the AMA has the same stance as physicians and any other self-regulating body (ADA included) never wants to give up control. And passing policy without the agreement of those who will be providing the care will be incredibly challenging and will add to the amount of time such health policy needs to be passed.
