Single payer healthcare, would it work?

Toyman01 wrote: I guess is comes down to this. Do you trust your government? Do you think a government employee is going to do as good of a job as a private citizen? Do you think a government run institution is going to have your interests at heart. Do you want to be "taken care of" by the government?

Not quite. I think that is an overly-simplified binary. The proper questions are: How much do you trust the government for what services? How much do you trust private industry for those services?

I neither wholly trust nor distrust government or private industry. It's not about if I want government or private industry but how much of each do I want for what things.

In general, my perception is that government run systems will be slow and inefficient, but with more public accountability to not cause harm. Privately run systems will be more efficient, but more sociopathic. So for basic issues of life, health, and liberty (e.g. military and criminal justice) I am generally willing to take wasteful but harm-avoidant over efficient but more likely to leave collateral damage.

In reply to Toyman01:

To put it another way... I don't believe public or private institutions actually really care about people. I think some workers care about the clients they serve, but most just want to do enough of the work assigned to them to keep their jobs.

I think, that about 10% of the client base takes up about 90% of time and resources.

Private institutions try to maximize profit by dealing with the difficult 10% as little as possible. Public institutions take longer to do things because they have to deal with even the difficult 10% and the workers are making the same amount of money if they spend an hour processing 1 difficult person or 9 easy people.

So, if the goal is to serve the most people with the fewest resources, private institutions are usually better. But if the goal is that you have to serve everyone (e.g. military, fire department, Emergency Room) a public institution is usually better. I usually find smaller local organizations do better, more efficient jobs. So I'd rather see my fire department and police services run at local levels.

Keith Tanner wrote:

Bobzilla wrote: Here's the kicker question for the "single payer in other countries is cheaper" crowd. I get that the out of pocket expenditure at the time of service is cheaper. I doubt there are any doubts about that. But what are their tax rates? Income? Sales? Import? Etc?

The US does have a very adversarial relationship with its own government, that's one notable difference between the US and Canada. Americans rely on their government but want it to go away

I think many people forget that this country was founded on that distrust of govt looking out for our best interests. Those of us that don't want the nanny-state that is GB or Canada are the types that Do everything we can to take care of ourselves and family without outside intervention. We take pride in that ability and loathe the very thought of letting anyone else do it for us.

Think if it like this: how many of us have made something for one of our projects rather than just going out and buying the same thing premade? Some thing with our lives. We want to be left alone to do it on our own. We won't learn to succeed by letting someone else do it for us.

The folks that founded the US aren't around anymore Now it's just the national story, like the idealized version of how your parents met. Nobody wants a "nanny state" until they need help themselves or they develop compassion for others.

In reply to Keith Tanner:

I believe compassion comes in many flavors and regulating my definition of compassion is not within the purview of the government.

You don't need a nanny state to have compassion. You do if your end game is complete control of your subjects. Government intervention worked out great for the Jews in Germany.

I was working on a post trying to thoughtfully summarize the balance of self-sufficiency and interconnectedness in a society where we unavoidably share resources and thus cannot avoid affecting each other to some degree, and thought I'd check back in to make sure my post wasn't too far behind the discussion. Oh well.

In reply to Bobzilla:

Are you comparing Nationalist-based, fear mongering Hitler taking control of the populace of Germany in an attempt to commit genocide to universal healthcare?

Because the last time I checked, unless you were Jewish, Germany's healthcare was pretty top notch for the day.

If we are invoking Hitler, then I would recommend locking this thread, because civility is about to go out the window.

Yeah, it pretty much already left the building. Thanks for a few good pages guys.