The Morality of a Single Payer Health Care System

[JonNC]

Which seems to be exactly what you do, by your own admission (the policy and emotion part).

Concerning healthcare, I want to emulate the systems out there that are the best by the overwhelming majority of metrics.

They’re all some form of single-payer. And they trounce us handily is most categories AND at lower per capita costs.

Just seems to be a better value…

And I want to value the principle of individual rights and limited government. I want to see us give the free market a chance to fix what Washington has already damaged severely. I want to see the principle of subsidiarity given a chance to work before the general destroys yet further American healthcare, along with liberty.

Relinquishing our individual right of healthcare to the government without even a constitutional amendment is, at best foolish, and at worst, voluntarily submitting to tyranny.
Authoritarian rule is never a better value.

 

[eddietoo]

i do not want the government deciding what health care i should receive; nor do i want the government deciding when i should receive health care.

there are a multitude of alternatives to a single payer, i.e. the government, run health care system.

 

[DarkLight]

Just the cost controls implemented by government to deny things like breast cancer screenings and DNA testing of rape victims.

But hey, we’ve all got to make our sacrifices for the utopia.

I’m not sure private health insurance is much better. Employer healthcare, even with good employers for skilled workers, does the same thing (although less for skilled workers). Private associations do the same by simply denying anyone who would be too expensive. And of course that’s why high-risk plans were considered to be a failure - people who weren’t affected wouldn’t fund them, which meant they weren’t really helpful and affordable to people who needed them.

 

[Vonsalza]

Vonsalza:

Which seems to be exactly what you do, by your own admission (the policy and emotion part).

Concerning healthcare, I want to emulate the systems out there that are the best by the overwhelming majority of metrics.

They’re all some form of single-payer. And they trounce us handily is most categories AND at lower per capita costs.

Just seems to be a better value…

And I want to value the principle of individual rights and limited government. I want to see us give the free market a chance to fix what Washington has already damaged severely.

Again, for the umpteenth time, healthcare is not a classic market. It is a natural oligopoly or monopoly. These economic scenarios don’t follow “the market model” optimally.

This seems to be a substantial blind spot in your education about economics. I do genuinely encourage you to study up on the phenomenon.

I want to see the principle of subsidiarity given a chance to work before the general destroys yet further American healthcare, along with liberty.

We did. It was the pre-ACA American healthcare system. As one would expect, it was great for us more affluent. For the rest, it was one of the bigger drivers of the cycle of poverty.

Relinquishing our individual right of healthcare to the government without even a constitutional amendment is, at best foolish, and at worst, voluntarily submitting to tyranny.
Authoritarian rule is never a better value.

Since we’re still private people going to a private doctor under a single-payer, this dystopia you imagine doesn’t happen. It only exists through fallacious conflations and we actually have the data of other national systems to refute you on this.

 

[JonNC]

Since we’re still private people going to a private doctor under a single-payer, this dystopia you imagine doesn’t happen. It only exists through fallacious conflations and we actually have the data of other national systems to refute you on this.

The fallacy here remains the disingenuous claim that doctors and patients will be able to enter into a contractual arrangement about care, irrespective of government.

 

[Vonsalza]

Vonsalza:

Since we’re still private people going to a private doctor under a single-payer, this dystopia you imagine doesn’t happen. It only exists through fallacious conflations and we actually have the data of other national systems to refute you on this.

The fallacy here remains the disingenuous claim that doctors and patients will be able to enter into a contractual arrangement about care, irrespective of government.

They are not prohibited from doing this in other nations that use a single-payer scheme, it is unreasonable and perhaps irrational that you “know” that it would be any different here.

 

[Theo520]

Obese patients and smokers face six month ban on NHS surgery

Obese patients and smokers will be denied surgery under cost-cutting NHS rationing plans, amid warnings from senior surgeons that the move will prompt a public outcry.

what a link, it just highlights how no system can afford uncapped care for chronic conditions.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

there are a multitude of alternatives to a single payer, i.e. the government, run health care system.

One of those alternatives is a single payer insurance program that does not run the health care system.

Private insurance does not “run” the health care system in the sense that it employs doctors and operates hospitals. Nor does it prevent you from paying for health care yourself and getting any kind of care you can pay for. A government program could do this too, if it were so structured.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

Vonsalza:

Since we’re still private people going to a private doctor under a single-payer, this dystopia you imagine doesn’t happen. It only exists through fallacious conflations and we actually have the data of other national systems to refute you on this.

The fallacy here remains the disingenuous claim that doctors and patients will be able to enter into a contractual arrangement about care, irrespective of government.

It is not a fallacy. It is a real possibility.

 

[JonNC]

It is not a fallacy. It is a real possibility.

It is not. If government is paying the bills, it will dictate the terms. It will decide unilaterally how much providers get paid, what services will be acceptable and for which patients.
Universality is the goal of single payer. That means that either quality of care or costs will suffer. With the general government already having debt well in excess of $100 trillion dollars, queuing, rationing and other cost cutting measures will be the order of the day. The government will determine.
That determination will be made based on the value of the individual to the collective society. The Ezekiel Emanuel perspective comes to mind, as does Charlie Gard.

 

[MonteRCMS]

Do you really want a post office clerk to decide on your medical treatment. He or she will have a million page policy and procedures manual and say yea or nay.

 

[Vonsalza]

JonNC:

Obese patients and smokers face six month ban on NHS surgery

Obese patients and smokers will be denied surgery under cost-cutting NHS rationing plans, amid warnings from senior surgeons that the move will prompt a public outcry.

what a link, it just highlights how no system can afford uncapped care for chronic conditions.

It’s an interesting concern. But lets also not forget what an anecdote is and why anecdotal evidence deserves scrutiny.

Lots of systems out there have issues.

Lots of them don’t. A reasonable person, looking at this “eyes open” will be cognizant of that fact.

Another interesting point is that despite it’s radically over-blown issues, just shy of 90% of Canadians support their system.

 

[Vonsalza]

Do you really want a post office clerk to decide on your medical treatment. He or she will have a million page policy and procedures manual and say yea or nay.

No. I want a doctor to decide. Just like they do on single-payer systems.

The doc determines your care and bills your insurance (which is the gov). The government does not determine your treatment, even if some folks really need it to under that scheme in order to support objectively lame arguments.

 

[JonNC]

Oh, this isn’t anecdotal. It is, by definition, the power government has when it controls healthcare. If government has the power to provide healthcare, it has the power to withhold it.

 

[Vonsalza]

Oh, this isn’t anecdotal. It is, by definition, the power government has when it controls healthcare. If government has the power to provide healthcare, it has the power to withhold it.

Again, you display your dazzling inability to distinguish between a nationalized system like the NHS and a single-payer system like the Canadian one.

*sigh

 

[JonNC]

The doc determines your care and bills your insurance (which is the gov). The government does not determine your treatment,

The government will determine what gets paid for by government. The government will decide what the doctor fee can be. The government will determine what procedures a doctor must perform.

 

[JonNC]

Again, you display your dazzling inability to distinguish between a nationalized system like the NHS and a single-payer system like the Canadian one.

If government holds the money,it controls the system. Your unwillingness to concede this is either from an unwillingness to accept facts, or an intentional deception

 

[Vonsalza]

Vonsalza:

Again, you display your dazzling inability to distinguish between a nationalized system like the NHS and a single-payer system like the Canadian one.

If government holds the money,it controls the system. Your unwillingness to concede this is either from an unwillingness to accept facts, or an intentional deception

It’s true that the gov will hold the same power that your insurer holds over you today. Like your present insurance will absolutely deny funding experimental treatment, the gov will probably do the same. And no one should be surprised by that. You can STILL GET YOUR EXPERIMENTAL TREATMENT, it’s just that your insurance won’t pay for it. Just like it wont today.

But this irrational, fear-mongering narrative you’ve worked so hard to craft just doesn’t exist in reality. Do we see people on Medicaid and Medicare being denied commonly accepted procedures for their care? Heck no. As a matter of fact, it’s more the opposite where some unscrupulous doctors are billing for things the patients don’t need or the doctor didn’t actually do.

“Well! That’s only because it’s a PARTIAL control presently enjoyed by the government! Have them cover everyone and there will be denied routine care everywhere!!!”

Ok… So let’s see if that’s commonly what’s going on with single-payer systems world-wide.
Nope. That doesn’t seem to be what happens…

I’m tired of the same old mindless tactics thrown out by conservatives when much-needed change rears its head. It’s like you have a checklist for your rhetoric.

Over-blown and sensationalist? *check
Light on facts? *check
Cherry-pick the handful of examples that supports our rigidity? *check
Grandstanding on the ASSUMED opinions of dead men who never dealt with a similar issue? *check

In all your examples, there seems to be this assumption that once change happens, democracy will end. If it’s a net-bad, we can’t somehow revert back. Frankly, that’s insane. When change occurs and doesn’t go away, that generally means that there are more people who support the change than don’t. So it goes in a democracy.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

LeafByNiggle:

It is not a fallacy. It is a real possibility.

It is not. If government is paying the bills, it will dictate the terms. It will decide unilaterally how much providers get paid, what services will be acceptable and for which patients.

And that is all they can dictate. They cannot dictate what you can contract for yourself.

Universality is the goal of single payer.

Of course it is.

That means that either quality of care or costs will suffer.

Why would quality have to suffer?

With the general government already having debt well in excess of $100 trillion dollars, queuing, rationing and other cost cutting measures will be the order of the day.

Speculation.

 

[Vonsalza]

JonNC:

With the general government already having debt well in excess of $100 trillion dollars, queuing, rationing and other cost cutting measures will be the order of the day.

Speculation.

Good lord, it’s all they have.

That and fear-mongering/doom-saying.