Belkira wrote:
I didn't mean you wouldn't have high health care prices, I have no idea what sort of prices you would have. I meant you won'5 have for-profit companies denying coverage to people who need it the most.
No. You'll have the government doing it instead. The difference is that the for profit organizations do what they need to do to earn a profit. So if people pay them money for insurance, they kinda have to deliver on what they promised, or they don't make money. Once the government has your money, it can change the terms and conditions of what you get however it wants, and you really don't have much say in it.
The problem with government run health care is the same basic problem of pension type systems. They are not investment driven, but rely utterly on current funding to pay for current costs. So you pay for 50+ years of your working life for those people who were receiving care while you were working. But when you need the care, that's being paid for by the current crop of taxpayers. Taxpayers who may find it in their best interest to cut the care you receive in order to reduce the costs coming out of their pockets. And when you're in that condition, you'll be in the minority and more or less at the whim of the younger majority.
You have zero recourse in that situation. You get whatever care the government says you get. With a privately funded system, you pay into your own health care, either via some kind of account, or insurance (or both). Since you've got a contract with the insurance provider, they're required to provide you the coverage agreed upon in the contract. And if they fail to uphold that contract, you can turn to the government and courts to force them to. Also, you get to decide what care and treatment you want based on what you can afford and what you want to spend money on. If you've invested your own money into your own account, and you choose not to spend it, you can hand it to your children and grandchildren instead. You can't do that with money you paid into medicare, so you have no reason to even think in terms of cost. I'll point out that you do *not* have a contract with the government. It can change the terms anytime it wants to and you're just out all the money you've paid into the system all your life. Also you have no real power to choose what is provided and what isn't, and there's no cost savings to you if you chose a less expensive alternative. And there's nowhere to go if the government makes that decision, cause you know, it's the government. So it's basically worse all the way around.
My issue is that actual health costs *will* rise over time absent competitive forces keeping them low. This is not a guess or speculation, it's a market fact. It can't not increase relatively speaking over time. At some point, those costs will rise to the point of unsustainability. At that point, the cost per "unit" of heath care wont or cant go down, so what must give is the quantity or quality of care. Which means that you wont get what you will feel you've paid for. It's not a matter of "if", but a matter of "when". And I suppose who happens to be in the generation that gets screwed by this.
Edited, Mar 20th 2013 8:14pm by gbaji