Americans can’t repeal the laws of economics.
The most relevant examples for what American health care would become under a single-payer plan are Canada’s and the UK’s health care systems both of which are nightmarishly dysfunctional and dangerous at this point in time.
The fallacy of of arguments for socialized medicine reside around an exclusive emphasis on incentives for consumers of health care and a complete avoidance of the effects of socialized medicine on incentives for providers of health care. When huge disincentives are erected in the name universal access to health care for consumers, producers do what they always do when the government begins to tax something heavily: they leave.
In 1948, after the UK started up the National health Service (NHS) within a few years a large number of Doctors in their 50s retired from practice. The prospect of a lot more work for less pay was not appealing. Those Doctors who had sufficient financial resources simply quit practicing. On the demand side, once going to the Doctor became a cost free transaction for the patient. UK facilities were inundated with hypchondriacs looking to treat phantom maladies. Demand goes up, supply decreases so prices go up. The NHS reacted to this through an at first implicit and the explicit care rationing scheme. This pattern has continued through to this day. It has become so severe that UK NHS officials are now seriously looking at privatization schemes to address the crisis.
The pattern in Canada followed the UK pattern almost exactly but just a little bit later. It also worth noting that both the UK and Canadian systems are about a least 20 years behind the US in terms of treatment modalities, both drug and and non-drug treatments. It is also worth noting that most notable medical device and drug research happens in the US and not in Canada and the UK. The incentives to innovate have been destroyed in these two countries.
People will not continue to work and to innovate under the threat of a gun. We don’t need or want care rationing schemes here in the US. The forgotten health care producer has to be remembered in any health care reform discussion.
There are far better ways to address health care access problems than to impose a single-payer program. Fewer health care producers, less health care. This elemental economic truth can’t seem to penetrate the obtuseness of liberals on this issue.
Great post. Thanks for that.