Why won't the United States change the healthcare system to something more socialized?

Answer 1

Because a lot of people are making a lot of money out of the current system.
And they have managed to convince a lot of Americans that they are somehow better off continuing to pay more for healthcare that any other country in the world yet continue to get a health care system ranked below Cost Rica and Dominica at 37th in the world.
Mind you - Americans are starting to catch on.

Answer 2

Because Socalized Medicine doesn't work.

Once something is owned by the government it stops being a buisness and starts being a jobs program. The people in the buisness are no longer held to account by anybody, so it stops being run in a way that serves the customer and starts being run in a way that serves the bureaucrats in charge. This has been proven time and time and time again... which is why in the 80s and 90s so many European countries sold off all the industries they socialized in the 40s and 50s... it looks good on paper, but it just don't work.

Now, there is a flaw in the free market model for health care... namely that medical care is often not a discretionary purchase.

Lets put it this way... if you are going to buy a car you research what sort of car you want, you look at what you can afford to spend, you shop around, you look for the best deal in your price range, and if you can't find it, you wait until you can find what you want. That doesn't work with medical care. You can't say..."Well I understand that it is a heart attack, and if I don't get to the E.R. within the next 13 min. I'll probably die... but I have this cupon from Methodist Hospital, could we go there instead?" Nobody says "Well, she is my only daughter, but is there a less expensive cancer treatment?"

Socialized medicine is supposed to remove these problems by separating the payor and the patient. The problem is, when you take away the responsibility for purchasing a good, you also take away the power of the purchaser... the power to demand good service and good value for your money. Essentially you make the entire national medical system one big charity ward, where the patients get attention when, if, and however the medical bureaucrats (who DO control the dollars) feel like giving it to them. That doesn't work well at all.

I think it was Reagan that said "Socialized Medicine will create a National Healthcare system with the effecency of the Post Office and the caring heart of the IRS."

If you don't believe me look at how our own Government Health Care system treats the returning war vets at Walter Reed, and other places. THAT is what socialized medicine gets you.

Answer 3

What you say is common sense and sounds good on paper but will not work in the USA. Currently you guys are bankrupt so a huge spending project like this is ill advised. Even if you were not bankrupt the revenue would have to come from somewhere and that would mean tax hikes. Your gas prices are relatively low and instead of raising those and/or increasing fuel economy (eg. using smaller fuel efficient cars instead of the hugeass SUVs etc) you guys would rather invade another country for oil. Your political system would require the people, president and congress to pass such a bill which i can't see anytime soon. In the UK the government directly operates the health service but the USA such a system is unfathomable. You have all these corporate intermediaries such as pharmaceutical companies, insurance etc. It would take a concerted effort for the government to break their interests. If you were going to hope for that you might as well hope for election campaigns of presidents and senators which does not cost millions. The polarization of politics in your system is also alarming and there would be so much political battles in healthcare that i shudder to think really. I did think about lawsuits as you guys are very litigacious and the courts pay out sums which just encourage it. But i think that providing the constitution did no prohibit it, you could probably insert a clause that user rights are limited when using the service. That in itself would probably be battled for over a decade though. Such is american politics. lol

Answer 4

I think that most politicians realize, deep down, that a national healthcare system might solve the problems we have today with costs but that a whole new crop of problems would arise. There are living examples of countries with national healthcare systems that prove the idea. Sure, the costs are reduced but the services are often delayed or otherwise suffer as a result.

I don't know the solution to our current healthcare situation, but I'm not so sure that the medicaid/medicare systems can be held responsible. I think that the number of uninsured people in the US is more of a contributing factor. If they cannot afford healthcare coverage, it's likely that they can't afford the bills associated with hospital visits. As a result, hospitals and clinics across the country write off huge amounts of money for services rendered. The writeoffs are, in turn, made up by increasing rates for services rendered. As a result of the increased rates from the hospitals, insurance companies raise their rates to consumers. At some point, people who may have once been able to afford health coverage find themselves uninsured because they can no longer afford it. It's a vicious circle and, as I said, I have no idea what the solution is.

Answer 5

There would be widespread opposition from insurance companies, HMOs, and medical practitioners worried about a loss of income. Setting up Medicare, the Canadian socialized medicine scheme, met some resistance, even though insurance companies were not a powerful lobby group, as is the case in the U.S. As well, the American public is easily manipulated by calling something "socialized" or "socialistic"; the implication seems to be that if they get socialized health care, they will end up living as though they were in an Eastern European communist country before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Closely tied to the this is what computer columnist John C. Dvorak called the "BIG GAS" theory: Business is Good, Governments Are Stupid. Subscribers to this theory conveniently ignore the fact that corporations are capable of being inefficient, slow-moving, and corrupt (e.g. Chrysler and other American automakers ignoring the popularity of fuel-efficient Japanese automobiles in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Enron) whereas there are some things that the government can do that no private sector corporation could do as well (e.g., building and managing roads, sewers, and other basic infrastructure, the military). There's no inherent reason why government is less efficient than business, particularly when you consider the fact that for many services, the profit motive would result in reduced service and efficiency.

Answer 6

'Socialized' is a brightly-colored word that is used in this argument--incorrectly--mostly by people who only want to bash 'liberals', and to throw sand in your face.

'Socialized medicine' is a system where the government runs all the clinics and hospitals and the doctors and other health care professionals all work for the government. An example is Britains National Health Service (NHS).

NOBODY in the US wants socialized medicine. The most popular plan here is a 'Canadian Style Single Payer Plan', which means health care is provided by private hospitals and clinics, and doctors work for them or are independant. The consumer can pick his own doctor and hospital. The government, in this case, only acts as the insurer. This is how Medicare works.

The advantage of this system is that the insurance pool includes everyone. Private health insurance companies want to insure only the healthiest people so they can make a profit. You can't blame them, the whole purpose of a corporation is to make a profit. But it means that unhealthy people can't get access to health care unless they have a lot of money. In fact the reason we have Medicare and Medicaid in the first place is because the insurance companies didn't want to insure the old, poor, and chronically ill--because they couldn't make any money doing that--so they got the govt. to take them off their hands.

If we just expanded Medicare to include everyone in the country, we would save tens of billions of dollars, and people would get BETTER care! Medicare has about a 1% overhead, commercial insurance is 20-30%. Medicare patients have their complaints about the system, but by and large they are happier than customers of commercial insurance plans.

As it is, we are a civilized country. Nobody bleeds to death on the steps of the emergency room. But we all pay for the care of those who can't afford it. If we only -acknowledged- this, we could save a lot of money--perhaps half of what we pay for health care today.

So to get to your question--why don't we do this? Because health care and pharmaceuticals are two of the most profitable businesses in the US, and two of the biggest campaign contributors. And as it is said about the US, we have the very best government money can buy!

But a growing number of Americans are still without access to health care, so we're not through with this discussion. And right wing 'talking points' are not going to make the problem go away.

Did you know the cost of health insurance in the US has risen 70% just since GW Bush has been in office? And it was considered a crisis, an emergency, long before that!

Answer 7

Socialized medicine is in use all over the planet and it works very nicely, its the money the govt would have to spend and all the kickbacks from the insurance companies and FDA the politicians would lose. It would be really nice if they did here what they do in the UK where doctors get paid by how much good they do.

Answer 8

The VA Hospital system is a government run system, and if you had watched the promises Democrats made during one of their debates in NH, they are willing to make the VA System more free so Soldiers can get services outside the system.

Socialism does not work, when will you libs get that.

Canada which is glorified all the time has a total population less than three major US Cities. and they still have long wait times for basic surgeries like cataract operations. Imagine the same system here taking care of 10 times the legal, and 100% of the Illegals. :)

Population of Canada 33Millions
US Population: 360Million
Illigal population in US: 25 to 40 Million

Answer 9

One reason is that the doctors would then be working for the government, and they don't want that. Another reason there would be no reason to have health insurance companies, and they don't want that. All hospitals will become run by the government, that doesn't sound to good. I am sure that there are many other reasons.

Answer 10

Money and quality of care!! Do your own research into other countries that have socialized medicine .