No, Nearly every single payer system allows you to purchase extra health care, over and beyond what the single payer system provides.
In Canada, as just one example, this is sometimes called "supplementary health insurance". See https://on.bluecross.ca/health-insurance/health-insurance-10... for an example
> Government picks generic drug that works for most people and has no incentive to worry about the 5% - 10% of people it doesn't work for. Oh, well
Generally, this isn't true either. Government picks generic drugs, because it frees up the most amount of money for them to treat other people with.
But if the government covers medications and there's a real medical reason to need a name brand drug over a generic, they'll usually prescribe you the name brand one automatically. Here's a list of that happening in the UK, for example - http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Medicinesinfo/Pages/Brandnamesa...
And of course, as always, your still welcome to buy any name brand drug yourself, if you like.
Total utter FUD. It's legal and normal in each of the 3 countries I've lived&worked in with a single-payer system. You seem very misled.
I stopped after reading this.
This is pretty much what we have now, except with an oligopoly instead of a monopoly. Not really seeing how going even more in the direction of a monopoly helps.
When people can make choices, thats when things change. People actually get sick, so paying for healthcare is more than just a cost, it can have a value as well.
At least with the current oligopoly system, there is a small amount of choice, and you can choose to purchase a drug on your own if what your insurer has on offer does not work or is more expensive. We should be going in the opposite direction - away from monopoly instead of towards it.
Instead of a single payer, we should have a single market.