It's incredible how far we'll bend over backwards as a country to avoid single payer healthcare. It's especially ironic that the most common argument against it is "taxes" when ...the outcome here is higher taxes.
Single payer would reduce choice and increase costs. People fantasize that price caps would fix everything, but they can't. Healthcare is just a resource and people pay high prices for it due to limited availability and regulatory requirements.
Do we really know what single payer would do with any certainty?
There's not really been a real test what a healthcare system with any kind of "natural" market forces at work. The current system is just a mess of tax breaks, middle man companies, hidden pricing, strange federal and local laws, employer choices and so on...
Even when someone talks about single payer, I'm still unsure what they imagine that looks like.
Similar things have been tried in other countries, and they have different failure modes. Ultimately the basic laws of economics predict with high accuracy what would happen. Now, I will grant that the current system is not based on the free market and might be substantially improved by changing to a different system, but the free market would solve problems created by all of the interventions that have been tried. Healthcare might still be unaffordable for some, but that is true of many scarce and desirable resources anyway.
Bullshit. The rest of the industrialized world is laughing at you for saying that. There are zero credible studies that show that socialized healthcare increases costs and plenty of bankrupt Americans because of our broken healthcare system.
I went to the doctor because of chronic acid reflux. They charged me a copay. They couldn't help so they referred me to a gastro doc. The gastro charged me a copay (more because it was out of network—there's no in network gastro doctors in my city). I was given an upper endoscopy, but insurance only covered 10% of the cost of the procedure. I spent $500 on the medication I was prescribed afterwards.
I have "good" insurance through my employer. If I didn't have insurance, I wouldn't have been able to get treated. The fantasy universe that you're describing is the one we live in: I have almost no choice, nothing is in network, and I spent $10k on healthcare on top of what's already taken out of my pay. Nobody in countries with socialized medicine has any of these problems.
>There are zero credible studies that show that socialized healthcare increases costs and plenty of bankrupt Americans because of our broken healthcare system.
You can just look at the budgets of other countries and see that they pay dearly for their inferior healthcare where you will die waiting for care. At least in the US you can get taken care of and flush the debt down the toilet in bankruptcy.
>I went to the doctor because of chronic acid reflux. They charged me a copay. They couldn't help so they referred me to a gastro doc. The gastro charged me a copay (more because it was out of network—there's no in network gastro doctors in my city). I was given an upper endoscopy, but insurance only covered 10% of the cost of the procedure. I spent $500 on the medication I was prescribed afterwards.
I'm sorry to hear this. Chronic or routine issues are not what insurance is supposed to cover. Just as you cannot insure the motor oil or tires on your car and have it be worthwhile, you won't find insurance that is favorable for this under any system, no matter who is paying. The simple reason for this is mathematical and baked into the actual purpose of insurance. Insurance is supposed to protect against low probability, high cost events. The only way an insurer can stay in business, much less make a profit, is to charge more than they pay out. This applies to the government as well. Guess what happens when that gang gets permission to extract as much money as it takes to provide a modicum of healthcare? You get a lot of corruption and a shitty experience, and don't have the money to pay for anything better either.
>I have "good" insurance through my employer. If I didn't have insurance, I wouldn't have been able to get treated. The fantasy universe that you're describing is the one we live in: I have almost no choice, nothing is in network, and I spent $10k on healthcare on top of what's already taken out of my pay.
Your limit is $10k per year out of pocket no matter how much the treatment costs. Of course, the premiums technically come out of pocket too, just like taxes would in the case you dream of.
>Nobody in countries with socialized medicine has any of these problems.
You have no idea. I see stories all the time about people who wait for months to see a specialist in those utopian countries, and even die waiting to be seen "for free" (as 40% of their pay or more goes to fund the damn system). If you're in Canada, you may find your complaints about the system met with a recommendation for euthanasia, like that disabled veteran who made the news a couple of years ago. I suggest you do some research into these kinds of stories and temper your expectations...
