"Get a doctor and some nurses, put them in a clean building, and give them a few million to buy machines and stocks. Even the government can do it, and the government does it at a lower price, because they aren't looking to rip off desperate people."
They may not be looking to "rip off desperate people", but they sure don't know how to efficiently spend money (example: every single government-run system in the history of humanity). If the government ran anything like an efficient business, I might agree to more government-run services. The problem is that over time, almost all end up hemorrhaging money and I can't trust my life to a system like this.
"You won't lose much if the government replaces pretty private lobbys with Stalinist admissions rooms, and tells doctors to look after the patients rather than con them into expensive, unnecessary, and sometimes risky procedures."
Except freedom of choice. Once you have a government system in place, nearly all private care will be put out of business because the government is allowed to play by their own rules. Look at the UK: private care is so expensive, unless you are in the top 1%, you can't afford it.
Nobody likes monopolies, yet those same people are fine with the government running one. The same exact rules apply. A monopoly on health care means the government doesn't have to compete, innovate, or have any incentive to give us better care.
"or you think that the management of hospitals needs innovative techniques, then there's no reason not to have public health."
Nobody that is pro-universal health will ever discuss the problems with it. I mean nobody. I can't believe a system is perfect. No system is. If we can't have intelligent discussions about the pros and cons of a system, I won't ever support it.
Private health care in the UK really isn't that expensive - I have it for our accident prone family of 3 and I don't think it's more than about £400 a month, with pretty minimal excess levels (about £100 per treatment). Note that I get this as part of my pay from my employer - which is fairly common.
Note that for anything like an emergency or a child birth you will want to be in an NHS hospital - for a variety of reasons...
My view of the main con of universal healthcare systems is that it's harder to get care for chronic conditions that are unpleasant/painful but not ultimately dangerous. I think it's hard to dispute that the US offers substantially better care for these issues if you have the money.
The fact is, though, that I believe this is the case largely because of how doctors are allocated. Doctors are, of course, a limited resource - there's simply an insufficient number of people with the requisite intelligence, mindset and dedication necessary to do the job. In universal healthcare systems, doctors are allocated largely by need first, whereas in the US the system is biased substantially by ability to pay. Personally I find that dubiously moral, but I think perhaps it fits well with the US mindset - it's been my experience that the poor are judged quite harshly there, and not necessarily seen as deserving of good care.
(a quite sidenote here - I often see people essentially saying 'if they want healthcare they should be more successful'. I don't really understand this point of view, because since healthcare is largely a limited resource, as people earn more money the cost of healthcare will go up with their ability to pay. No matter how hard everyone tries, there will always be a bottom percentage who get poor care)
> Nobody likes monopolies, yet those same people are fine with the government running one. The same exact rules apply. A monopoly on health care means the government doesn't have to compete, innovate, or have any incentive to give us better care.
The same rules do not apply if you have a functioning government - in principle if a government produces poor results with respect to public services, you kick them out and vote in a replacement, something you can't do (without monopoly regulation) to a private company. This happened when the Tory government got junked in favour of Labour in the 90s. Labour, for all their (many) other faults, saved the NHS and helped turned it into the highly efficient system we have today. Is it perfect? No, but it's much better than most alternatives.
> They may not be looking to "rip off desperate people", but they sure don't know how to efficiently spend money (example: every single government-run system in the history of humanity)
I see this meme spread a lot, yet the UK's publicly-run system indisputably achieves better overall results for the amount of money put in than the US's private one.
You could say the US problems are partly due to African Americans in bad areas - the problem is socioeconomic, not an issue with the health system.
You could also say that the UK cooks its data more, trying to look good.
But you can't dispute that the US spends a lot on healthcare, and it's hard to believe that they get much more value for money.
Of course, doctors in the US might work harder, as they have better incentives (working at a higher hourly pay). Or maybe they have less incentives to work hard, as they are already time poor and cash rich, and giving them more flexibility and a higher hourly pay will just make them cut back on hours. (Paradoxical results are often assumed to be impossible, given certain assumptions in economics, but those assumptions just don't work).
> Doctors are, of course, a limited resource - there's simply an insufficient number of people with the requisite intelligence, mindset and dedication necessary to do the job.
That's not exactly quite true; we have far more qualified people than we actual doctors, the AMA strictly limits the supply [1] by controlling the schools and this of course seriously affects the market, the prices, and their salaries. Things would be much cheaper if 57% of qualified applications weren't turned away every year.
That's interesting! Do you have any thoughts on why there is not more outcry about this? I'd guess the social status of doctors has something to do with this?
They may not be looking to "rip off desperate people", but they sure don't know how to efficiently spend money (example: every single government-run system in the history of humanity). If the government ran anything like an efficient business, I might agree to more government-run services. The problem is that over time, almost all end up hemorrhaging money and I can't trust my life to a system like this.
"You won't lose much if the government replaces pretty private lobbys with Stalinist admissions rooms, and tells doctors to look after the patients rather than con them into expensive, unnecessary, and sometimes risky procedures."
Except freedom of choice. Once you have a government system in place, nearly all private care will be put out of business because the government is allowed to play by their own rules. Look at the UK: private care is so expensive, unless you are in the top 1%, you can't afford it.
Nobody likes monopolies, yet those same people are fine with the government running one. The same exact rules apply. A monopoly on health care means the government doesn't have to compete, innovate, or have any incentive to give us better care.
"or you think that the management of hospitals needs innovative techniques, then there's no reason not to have public health."
Nobody that is pro-universal health will ever discuss the problems with it. I mean nobody. I can't believe a system is perfect. No system is. If we can't have intelligent discussions about the pros and cons of a system, I won't ever support it.