Why can t America have a free health care system?

Question

We need the pro and against answers.

Answer 1

There's no free lunch - or, in this case, health care.

Whether you get charged for health care at the doctor's office, through your health care provider or on your taxes at the end of the year, you're paying for it. And if not you, somebody else who pays taxes.

Americans are already overtaxed. The budget is stretched to the max with all the entitlement programs currently in existence. And you'd like to add health care, would you? And you know what's going to happen. We'll grow old and stop paying taxes, but we'll need the most health care because we'll have one foot in the grave. So who will be paying for us? Our children and our children's children. Lovely. Yeah, let's commit future generations to paying for our health care.

Answer 2

Margaret Thatcher said it best: "The problem with Socialism is that eventually you run out of other peoples' money to spend."

The problem with Americans is that we always naively believe we can do the impossible. Look at how inefficient government is in almost everything we do, from education to welfare, to road building. Everything we do ends up costing many times what it should, and no amount of supervision or governmental bureaucratic oversight is going to change that.

There is no such thing as "free" health care. Everyone would simply end up paying higher taxes and getting a much lower quality of care. You have no idea what socialized medicine is like. I do. I'm living it here in the Czech Republic. Let me describe it.

No matter where you have it, socialized medicine is rationed medicine. That means that doctors will proscribe certain treatments or drugs only as a last resort, and often never at all. For example, I just had knee surgery. The only reason I had it already is that I was willing to pay for it. My two best friends here also need knee surgery but they will have to wait at least three months. They don't even want to give you an MRI here due to the cost. How would you feel, having to be cut open so the doctor could see what's happening with your knee when a simple MRI would suffice to give the answer?

Doctors under Socialized medicine care even less about patients than they do now (if that's even possible). Just yesterday I had to call an ambulance to take me to the hospital. I was in bad shape from a complication of my surgery. They just left me laying around in the cold ER, ignoring whatever I asked. They can't wait to get rid of you. You are simply a number.

Answer 3

Because we are a capitalist society. Competition breeds a better end product - whether you are producing widgets or health care.

We could offer free health care, free housing, free automoblies and free transportation for everyone - but the burden would fall on those who are actually employed to provide the funds for these services. If all of that was free why would anyone work? Nobody would work and soon nobody would have any of those things.

Don't you already feel you are already paying enough in taxes and there are already too many people getting a free ride with welfare and food stamps and such?

Answer 4

I'm against it as it is a form of government socialization and will only decrease the level of care we get in this country and increase the wait time for appointments. The majority of the worlds best doctors come to the United States to work so they can profit more from their expensive and lengthy educations and people from all over the world come here for the best treatment.If anything we need to reform the pharmaceutical industry as their tremendous profits make it harder for the poor and elderly to buy private insurance and also make it easier for companies to extend health care benefits to their employees by giving them tax breaks.

Answer 5

This is too easy to answer first of all there is no free lunch!
I am against it because the negative outweighs the positive by a longshot.
Health care will be ration.
Taxes will explode
Government will allow people to die because it will be too expensive to treat them.
Waiting period for treatment will go up exponentially.
Will be unable to sue government for gross malpractice
Our best doctors will gravitate towards private care (pays more).
It will reduce the amount of people who wants to go into medicine, if you take out loans of 200k to be a doctor how do you pay off that loan with government restricting your income.
I could go on and on but you get the idea.

Answer 6

People abuse the health care system enough. They run to the doctor's office every time they get the sniffles because they know their insurance will pay for it. If it were free for everyone, their would be a lot more not so sick people running to the doctor or getting unnecessary MRIs, creating long waits (ask a Canadian). If insurer's would only cover major illnesses or injuries and not regular doctor's visits, health care providers would have to compete for your business. That would cause costs to come down.

Answer 7

First show me a country where it is working. I'm not keen on waiting 3 months for a doctors appointment. Also countries with socialist health care systems do not provide the latest cutting edge medicine . Once you take the incentive out of new drugs and better techniques, they stop being produced.

Answer 8

no such things as freehealthcare regradless if goverment paid for it, or your employer, you had bought the healthcare coverage yourself. Rather deregulate the isunrance industry, and allow selling of isnruance acorss state lines, and allow people that want goverment healthcare to option to pay higher taxes for it, but people that dont want goverment coverage to opt out by paying a lower tax rate. Allow more healthcare options by allow more helathcare people to compete with doctors on everyday treatments by allowing more quick clincis, and mintue care clincs to take on bloated MD Offices that need 40 coders just to get insurance payment. Transparecy be the key in healthcare costs, and reining in costs if it not done no system will be sucessful.

Answer 9

FREE? How could it be free? If the Government provides (FREE) health care that means the Government has to pay for it, That means the working taxpayers will have to pay more taxes so the Government will have the $$ to provide (FREE) health care. The Doctors have to pay for their education to become a Doctor now you want them to work for Free? I just don't understand you people. If it's Free it's not worth having!

Answer 10

Because there is no such thing. Somebody, at some level, has to pay for it. This "cost" could come in the form of higher taxes, lower quality care, reduced freedom of choice, stifled innovation, etc. or a combination of the above.