akuma587 said:
The key factor is the nature of healthcare compared to food. Healthcare is an "emergency" service like police protection, fire protection, natural disaster protection, national defense protection, etc. You shouldn't have to be making decisions about how much something costs when your life is in danger. Food doesn't really fit into that category. Sure, it is necessary, but its not something that the government is even in a good position to provide or that presents a compelling reason why the government should provide it compared to the private sector. Now the flip-side of that obviously is that the government at some point will decide when something is unnecessary and that they aren't willing to pay for it. This isn't exactly a new phenomenon as insurance companies do this on a daily basis, and it can be particularly harsh if your insurance coverage is low, it is below your deductible, etc. So the real question is, do you trust insurance companies more or the government. Fuck insurance companies, I'll take my chances with the government. They've already demonstrated that they have no concern whatsoever for their policy holders. Not to mention you won't see private care disappear altogether (kind of like private schools). If you don't like what the government provides, you won't have to use it.
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Except that healthcare (for the most part) is not an emergency service ...
People make choices which allow their body to deteriorate over long periods of time to a level where it becomes an emergency, they then are faced with expensive care to return them to the pre-emergency status quo, and then they have years of amazingly expensive care in an attempt to reverse the damage that they have done. There is minimal cost (and in some cases massive savings) in an individual preventing the most common and costly illnesses, and there are massive costs associated with repairing the damage from their choices.
If people took care of themself, healthcare costs would be around 1/4 to 1/3 their current cost and the majority of those costs would be associated with unpreventable illnesses, injuries, and preventative healthcare and the system would be great for everyone regardless of who ran the system ... In contrast, while people still refuse to protect their own health and we develop new long term (and expensive) treatments to keep people with preventable illnesses alive longer costs will continue to skyrocket and the healthcare system will be poor for everyone regardless of who runs the system.
