FrumCA wrote:
This is a tough one. A total government takeover of health care would expand government bureaucratic oversight, increase costs, and restrict alternatives to only government offered programs. Here's a conservative viewpoint on the subject to consider:
Self-styled “progressives” in Congress and elsewhere are proposing a government takeover of American health care. Such a takeover would destroy Americans’ existing coverage and their right to alternatives outside the government program; and it would erect a system of total political control over virtually every aspect of the financing and delivery of medical care. Nor would it ensure delivery of its central premise and promise: care for every American.
Beyond closing off individuals’ alternatives to coverage outside the government program and restricting their medical care through independent physicians, such a government takeover would also introduce an unprecedented politicization of American health care. Congress, beset by frenzied lobbying by powerful special interest groups, would ultimately determine health care budgets and spending, as well as the rules and regulations that would govern care delivery by doctors, hospitals, and other medical professionals. Patients’ personal choices, as well as the professional independence of their doctors and other medical professionals, would be subordinated to the turmoil of congressional politics and the bureaucratic machinations of distant administrators. The machinery of federal control would dwarf the existing federal bureaucratic apparatus that runs today’s Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare programs.
The scholars who contributed to this volume have outlined the substance of “single payer” legislation, the many promises made on its behalf, and the many costs and consequences entailed in adopting such a large and disruptive program of centralized government control. They have indicated, in impressive detail, the patient experiences in Britain and Canada, the unprecedented tax impact of single-payer legislation on the economic well-being individuals and families, and the threat that such an impersonal system poses to physician autonomy and patient freedom, including personal access to high-quality and specialized medical care.
https://www.heritage.org/article/the-truth-about-government-controlled-health-care
This is a tough one. A total government takeover o... (
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Providing access to health care does not have to be and all or nothing thing. Remember the public option that was originally part of the original ACA?
Portugal, for example, has a public system and a private system. The private system works very much like it does in the United States and the public system works just like you probably think it does. Having been a consumer of the health care systems in both countries I will tell you my experience is that I have better care and outcomes in the Portuguese system. And I am not locked in to one or the other. I can use either the public system or the private system, depending on which is a better fit for what ails me. In fact, I probably have more freedom of choice than you.
Organizations like the Heritage Foundation like to scare you with the propaganda that it's a total government takeover. That is simply not true.
What is true is that in the aggregate Portugal has far better health outcomes than the United States. Also true is that no one in Portugal goes broke because they get sick.