And by cheaper I mean overall. Of course in a single payer system taxes would have to go up to pay for it but personal out of pocket expenses would go down as people wouldn't have to worry about paying for their medical on their own.
Looking forward to the fight . . . er dicussion.
It won’t save money because Government is just incapable of doing ANYTHING efficiently, cost-effectively, and without featherbedding and graft.
Granted our current medical billing system is overrun with inefficiencies and duplication that wastes tons of money.
This ignores the criteria of quality, quantity, availability, timeliness, value, etc.
When your neighbors, via the arm of government, pay more and more for the beans you desire, the shelves at your grocery store will hold fewer and fewer selections of beans, and beans of lower and lower quality. Your share of the cost you pay at the register might (or might not) be held artificially relatively low, compared to a free market price, for some particular, targeted, selection of beans. But to the extent that the government (and your voting neighbors) manipulate the free contracting of bean seller and bean buyer, the quality and variety will go down.
No.
I cracked a vertebra a couple months ago and found myself in the emergency room. Needless to say I was in alot of pain.
I sat waiting in what looked like the Martinez family reunion just because little Juan or Jose had a sniffle.
“No we no go to Walgreens and buy Nyquil... we go to hospital... get it free.”
I’m all for it. Just look at what a good job the government does running welfare, social security, the US postal service - Oh wait, those are all broke. Never mind.
We at the Super Cheap Single Payer Health Care System (SCSPHC) have reviewed your need for life saving surgery and have determined you are too old, too unimportant, too risky, or on our political kill list. Your surgery has been denied. But the wonderful news is you have been placed on the Comfort Care Plan, which consists of 2 aspirin a day and a I LOVE Obama Hypoallergenic pillow with 100% egyptian cotton pillowcase (your choice of color- blue or light blue). Thank you for paying your Super Cheap Single Payer Health Care System (SCSPHC) bill in a timely manner all these years.
Sincerely,
The SCSPHC board of appointed anonymous people
Neither is a sustainable system. The current merely hasn’t collapsed yet from it’s monopoly price system/government malfeasance. “single payer” (i.e. socialized) medicine falls apart eventually too, the only reason the European ones held for so long was because we carried their defense spending for decades...
IMHO, all those who “trust” the government with these issues are extremely naive.
No.
In no way would I be for “single payer” aka government monopoly on doctors and medicine. America was not chartered as a communist country. I will and would pay more on the black market just to avoid single-payer. It is evil. It places life and death decisions in the hands of unelected people that you cannot get rid of.
It is a mistake to accept the abstract conceptual framework of libtards. A single payer system would not be cheaper than the current system unless there was a drastic deterioration of quality and quantity of service.
Egalitarianism and making something free to the individual and chargeable to the group as a whole is to make consumption of the individual virtually costless, which leads to the abolition of cost in the spending of income, which leads individuals to demand everything.
The increase in demand leads to:
1) an overall increase in cost of medical care as a whole to the taxpayers.
2) a decrease in quality and quality of medical care supplied by doctors to individuals.
The bureaucratizing of medicine and the control of doctor's fees and treatments turns doctors into slaves, and ultimately makes medicine unattractive as a profession, which will lead to a decrease in the supply of doctors and a doctor shortage.
To control costs, the government will have to resort to death panels, a prohibition of many procedures, and opposition to medical advances, in order to save money.
No. Not for sale at any price.
SnakeDoc
There is no such thing as “single payer”. The government pays for NOTHING. Taxpayers pay for everything and when a lib says “single payer” they really mean that the achievers need to be paying and the government distributes it. People who believe in government healthcare are simply parasites who believe someone else should pay for them.
“And yet routinely the US ranks behind many other countries that do have a universal heath care system.”
BS! Those who believe that need to make one of those countries their home.
Logically, the answer is no. Because not only won’t it cost less, but it *can’t* cost less.
To explain, say you want to buy something, say an apple. The price dictated by the market is based in market forces. If it becomes too high, many people stop buying apples that it is no longer viable to sell apples. But if government is involved, it contributes *nothing* to the deal, but costs a LOT, just for it to be involved. It cannot make the price of apples lower, but it can make you pay more for your apples, with the faux promise that you will always have whatever passes for apples, even if they are spoiled and inedible.
But government isn’t the only thing that can bias healthcare. If you also buy “apple insurance”, so you pay a flat fee to buy your apples for a month, you have still added a layer that adds *nothing* to the deal, precisely because your purchasing of apples is a routine thing.
Granted, apple insurance still makes sense if unpredictably, you *must* have an apple, or you will die. But few want to provide “catastrophic” apple insurance, because when you *must* have an apple, the price of apples may be impossibly high.
But enough about apples. What about health care?
Right now, some doctors are offering GP health care, but refuse insurance, Medicare and Medicaid as payment. By not having to hire a bunch of office staff solely to do paperwork for the three things, they save so much money that they can offer their patients the same services and treatment for 50% less.
However, and importantly, this applies to routine health care only. Catastrophic health care is a completely different ball of wax, and one where insurance is almost essential unless a person is very rich.
Yet this looks at possibilities: it is also important to look at the *realities* of single payer in other countries.
Canada requires government health care by forbidding private health care for the most part. The end result is that for major health problem, Canadians almost have to travel to the US for prompt service.
And that is the first flaw of single payer.
Secondly, for many more importantly, look at the state of Britain’s single payer, in its final death throes. As its prices have continued to escalate, the quality of its service has declined so much that medical murder is seen as a practical cost saving technique. Perhaps as many as 30,000 people a year now are having their lives cut short because of “economic necessity”.
Single payer has turned a “health care system”, into a national euthanasia program.
And there are many in the US who want that here. They see the Baby Boomers as a threat to future government growth, and having to choose between the two, they are more than willing to exterminate everyone over a particular age, and/or with particular health problems.
Such people have given up on the idea of medicine and the healing arts. They want control, and do not care who suffers and dies in their path to get control.
Truly, the motto of the Democrat party has become:
“Here we may reign secure, and in my choyce
To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell, then serve in Heav’n.”
— Lucifer, from Paradise Lost
The one big problem is it is not healthcare.
No
For the same reason many others have already stated.
A monopoly any monopoly is ripe for corruption and waste.
The reason capitalism works is because of competition.
Is our current system fair? No, some do reason sub standard care. If we had a single payer health service then there would exist two tiers, the elite would get the best and everyone else would get the worse. Just look at where it already exist, Canada and United Kingdom. And it still would not be fair.
Well for one thing it can’t be cheaper because you add administrative overhead. Once you start pooling money somebody has to be in charge of it, and they gotta get paid. But even if we found a way around that basic rule of finance you still get the main problem of single payer which is on display in New York, it puts the government in charge of the people. Once the government starts paying for your healthcare they now have a vested interest in your lifestyle decisions.
Hell no, no way would I be tied to a system where I would have to go to a public hospital or the doctors that practice there.