Pining for a money pit
Government healthcare is a bottomless money pit.
Many people in the United States desperately wish the government would finish taking over the healthcare industry – to fully "socialize" it. Even if that were morally and legally justifiable, we must ask whether it's financially viable. The rest of the Anglosphere is saying their socialized healthcare systems aren't working, and for the same reasons:
- United Kingdom is planning its largest NHS reform in history because the system is providing less care with more funding. It's going broke in spite of previous reforms.
- Canada is suffering a severe lack of available care due to lack of funding.
- Australia is asking if it's universal healthcare can be saved from its lack of funding.
- New Zealand's universal healthcare system is also suffering a financial crisis.
It seems when you offer something for free, people use much more of it than they otherwise would. It's hard to pay for all that, so you cut salaries. Then your employees burn out and your system falls apart. Seems pretty predictable. (We're seeing the same pattern with America's government-run school system.)
But maybe you think things will somehow play out the opposite way in the United States? In that case, it's worth noting the United States has been running an experiment in government healthcare since at least the 1920s. It's called the Veterans Health Administration. It is the largest hospital system in the United States. And it has a reputation for excessive wait times so severe that dozens of patients have died while waiting in Phoenix alone. It even falsified records to hide the waiting. And we can't forget the budget shortfalls. This is fundamentally the same story as government-run healthcare in UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. The United States is not so unique it can escape the constraints of human nature.
The American healthcare system is an abomination of government intervention. Why would we double down when we know the result would be worse? The obvious solution is less government intervention, and more freedom. More competition, more price shopping, more accountability. Restore the free market and allow it to work its magic.