If people wanted to pay higher taxes they could have all those things. If there was some way to divide the population into two halves, one wanting to pay more or receive more, the other content with status quo or better, then it would not be coercive (although ridiculously expensive for the half who do want to pay, because in that half, about a third would not be paying anything).
I worked out that America could have free health care if there was a 3% surtax on gasoline. So with that in mind, you could have pumps where you pay the current price, and pumps where you pay 6% extra and the extra goes to health care. I’m thinking if you were in a hurry, those 6% surcharge pumps would be pretty quiet.
This is not a policy suggestion, just an illustration of how socialized medicine actually works in economic terms. I don’t think it would be sustainable to have two different systems anyway (obviously the status quo people would need to go to different health care facilities than the free service people, in some cases anyway).
We don’t have free medical care in Canada if you hear Democrats saying that we do, in some provinces we pay directly and in some others there is a payroll tax which probably means that workers earn less than they otherwise might (and goods and services cost more). But there’s no such thing really as free government services, somewhere, somebody pays for it in their taxes.
That tag line is now corrected ... and it only took five seconds.
Does this assume that consumption of the no-price health care and consumption of the more expensive gasoline would both remain unchanged?