Yes, bureaucracy is a terrible thing. But universal health care paid by employer and administered by the state is a proven and mature technology. In a lot of countries it works without much noise. And health care and basic education free for everybody is something I absolutely want.
People with low income are still motivated to work for food, clothes or a home. Threatening them with illness or death is not a more effective incentive, and has the colateral effect of upsetting people. and lowering general health conditions that could cause epidemies.
Agreed. People who rave about government--provided healthcare seem to be mostly talking about routine care: colds, broken bones, pregnancy.
My aunt is an oncology nurse. She has told me that she sees a lot of patients from Canada seeking treatment in the US that they can't get in Canada under their healthcare system. Of course, it's only those who have money who can afford to do this, if you're not rich you're just out of luck.
The fact that it works in many other countries doesn't mean it will in the United States. Agreed that it successful in many other countries like Canada, UK and France but if you look closer there are a lot of factors that will work against universal health care being successful in the United States. To see if this will work you also need to look at failures. Take India for example government health care in India is awful for the obvious reason, population.
United States population is growing at almost the same rate as India. We also have a new immigrant population every year. We also have the most expensive form of health care thanks to the system that rewards bad doctors. Given this if one were to start universal health care for everybody it would just mean a lot more taxes for all of us. Which is fine with me if I knew that it would work but these issues that I stated above cannot be solved by throwing in more money. There need to be a change in attitude of health care providers towards the business. It might be rewarding them for now but in the long run it is self destructive.
HSA like the earlier comment made on the thread is step in the right direction but it is mostly optimal for younger people. Also even in places like India people have come up with novel ways to solve this problem (http://iaimtomisbehave.org/2009/06/04/healthcare-doctors/). There are alternatives out there we should consider before taking this big step towards universal health care.
This is one of my arguments against a national health plan in the US. I can't think of a single thing in this country that has been made better by the government being in charge of it. Anyone who has had to deal with the IRS, the VA, or any number of other government agencies knows what that is like.
People with low income are still motivated to work for food, clothes or a home. Threatening them with illness or death is not a more effective incentive, and has the colateral effect of upsetting people. and lowering general health conditions that could cause epidemies.