"I'll try ̶s̶p̶i̶n̶n̶i̶n̶g̶ printing more money, that's a good trick!"
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Government is always inefficient. Medicare for all would cost substantially more per capita in taxes than private insurance. Despite that, I have conflicting thoughts about universal guaranteed healthcare.
Someone who isn't an ideologue, I like that.
Yes, government is rather inefficient. But for some reason, countries with 'universal healthcare' spend less on health care than the US with better health outcomes. This has two reasons: the obesity epidemic in the US, and the fact that some health care is delayed or denied for us. But may universal health care not cut out a lot of bureaucracy and form-filling?
Honestly, I don't know. I don't want to support one position or other simply because either my country or 'tribe' supports it, so I just decide to do the wisest thing of all: shut up.
I think the price of healthcare in the US is messed up in a similar convoluted way as university tuition. In both cases, something the state did ruined things. Considering that, perhaps further state encroachment would have counterproductive results.
But is there any place where it actually works fine then? Everywhere else the state does more, not less.
State healthcare generally sucks in all countries, although in different ways. Whatever the USA's health insurance details are, it has made healthcare prices skyrocket with time. Other countries may not have made those decisions, but they may have less capacity, longer waiting lines, or less modern implements.
The key is how things are done. In the USA, student loans you can't bankruptcy out of and federal funding have made it so Universities increase tuitions beyond the value of the education offered. Health insurance stuff have increased healthcare prices so that a sore throat drop that costs pennies is billed for $10. Tax law is maddening in its complexity.
The USA's decision-making is polluted with lobbying and special interests. If the USA can't meddle in an industry without worsening things, perhaps sweeping overarching federal programs are a terrible idea. The state simply won't be able to not make a clusterfuck of it.
Outcomes have a lot to do with inputs. It does not follow that simply switching the US over to single payer would result in any sort of good. You'd also have to get rid of all the profiteering and corruption, and I just don't see any reason turning more over to government would do that.
It's kind of like defense spending. Other countries spend immensely less on defense, even per capita, with similar "outcomes" (they still have a country). But the government is already in charge of defense spending. And yet they're constantly trying to turn things over to the private sector, use "commercial off the shelf" etc. There is no reason to think creating a single payer Defense Spending Agency would be anything but a boondoggle.
The US doesn't have private health care -- the government is immensely involved, and we don't have public health care, either. We were supposed to have universal healthcare care of Obama, but I'm sure the same people who always whined about it will claim we don't. You can't trust the government to take care of you, and you can't trust our corporatocracy, either. Bad healthcare is just a symptom of the rot, not due to any lack of planning.