So whoever actually implements nationalized health care needs to be aware of a fundamental principle of economics: Supply and Demand Curves. Let me know if I don't understand this right, but I remember learning that the cheaper something is, the more people will consume or use it.
While I agree people should not be turned away from emergency medical care due to lack of funds, to give medical care for free would cause people to go to the doctor a lot more than they do. From what I hear at medical school, we are short on competent care-providers, especially in geriatrics. Also, the United States is getting older and older. The combination sounds like it would lead to problems or a Canada-like system (no offense to our neighbors to the north) where people with problems that can wait do just that--wait in pain.
In fact, I never went to the doctor except for summer camp physicals or shots. But my junior and senior year of college when I learned about the free doctor on campus, I went just about everytime I got sick, and only 1 of the 4 times I remember did I get a prescription for antibiotics--the other times were all just things that needed to run their course. So by giving me free access to the doctor made it so that 3 out of 4 of my visits were pretty much a waste of time.
I'm not saying don't nationalize healthcare--I am saying take a different look at how to solve the problem of too high of prices rather than making it free for all. I believe gearing up the supply side by letting more people in to medical schools, removing organizational limits on how many trainees there can be at a time, etc. would help the problem more than turning into Canada would. The only people I see suffering from this would be the doctors--instead of being in the top 10 percent income bracket, they'd get bumped down to the upper 25 percent. (I know, asking doctors and medical training organizations to play by the capitalist rules would not be very nice on their pocketbooks, but hey, capitalism works for other fields, why not ours?)
And don't tell me that letting more people in to medical school would mean we'd have dumber doctors; we already have people in medical school that maybe shouldn't be there--a fellow Californian med school classmate thought Nebraska bordered Canada.
Artificially lowering prices of healthcare would artificially fix the problem. Why not go by the rules of economics and make medical training organizations do away with their policies to protect their members' pocketbooks?
