People need the health care that they need. Unless we're talking about small things like your own private bed in a hospital, there's no room in a just society for a "basic service" which does not provide the best possible care.
Unfortunately health care is still a finite resource, and you can't give everyone the best care. You either give some the best care and everyone else good care, or you give everyone pretty good care, but no one gets the best care.
Each has its merits, but my personal feeling is if no one gets "the best care", then we as a society will forget how to give such care, and medical innovation will become stagnant.
There is a reason that the health systems with at least some private participation (USA, France, Germany) also have the most innovation. We need a balance so there can still be a motive for innovation.
It's considered fair exactly the for reasons you have mentioned: you pay more for a premium product.
> there's no room in a just society for a "basic service" which does not provide the best possible care.
A regulated market that denies individual differences and enforces the same salary for different talents is incompatible with a "just society". In this case, healthcare workers with above-average talent would emigrate to a country where they can get a fair salary.
If you are worried about fairness, please consider the other side, the healthcare professional who provides the service.
Patients who pay basic fees are not entitled for the "best possible care". The provider of the "best possible care" can raise the price anytime. There is no economic justification for price rigging.
Gross.
Is it unfair because it’s health care specifically or because of something else? Premium service offerings abound: priority mail delivery; first class passage; reddit gold; ongoing memberships or subscriptions to movie theaters, golf courses, publications, and podcasts; “freemium” model web services, and Amazon Prime.
… there's no room in a just society for a "basic service" which does not provide the best possible care.
Basic service and best possible care are at different ends of the spectrum for whatever good or service we’re talking about. What did you mean by this remark?
Sure they do. Rich people hire private security all the time. Heck, not-rich people do it too. Like your local Chuck E Cheese who hires a security guard on Friday night.
Same with fire protection. There are plenty of private fire protection companies.
Everyone gets those basic services paid for out of their taxes, but some people want more than basic service, and there is nothing wrong with that.
The OPs system would work great and you could modify it simply enough to account for your system too -- everyone pays a health tax, which is then redistributed as an HSA payment to every American, setting a base level of funding.
I'm actually a big fan of single payer, but not because of the social impacts, only because of the ease of administration aspects. But if you did OPs system and made sure everyone could participate, it would probably work just as well, because there would need to basically be a health payment cleaning house to make it work.