FTFY
People "love their health insurance" when they have it forever through their employment, and feel safe in their position.
80% of people in the US, including 50% of Republicans, support M4A precisely because they are not part of the upper-crust minority who are afforded such luxuries.
Of course, this would be mitigated by the elimination of health insurance premiums and other redundancies, but a federal taxpayer funded solution would result in a more transparent wealth transfer, whereas the employer sponsored tax deductible health insurance gimmick allows for better discrimination on who receives healthcare, and ideally reduces the amount of wealth transfer by reducing the healthcare many people receive.
Just goes to show where our "representative" democracy has gone. The number I quoted is for voters registered Republican.
My conversations are usually reminiscent of this:
How can you shop around when prices are that distorted?
What baffles me the most is that most "socialized" systems functions much like a tax-paid insurance policy that covers everything and has no profit motive.
Even in a normal insurance situation you're "paying for someone else's treatment". That's the whole point of insurance.
It's all funny money til it lands in my lap, then suddenly it's real.
The government is perfectly capable of ensuring access to a market without regulating it to death. The SNAP program (Food Stamps) is a great example of how this works in a separate market with very little elasticity in demand.
Almost every other developed country has a system that works for healthcare. It's almost always single payer or something where you definitely don't go shopping around for hospitals.
Doesn't it start to feel a bit like indoctrination when arguing for a "free market" when no other developed country has a free market for healthcare?
Is everyone else stupid? What aren't they seeing? Especially in the age of the internet?
I just can't follow this logic.
I would love to get someone who argues from the "free market" point of view do some introspection and explain the logic in a way that doesn't feel like repeating the same 2-3-4 ideas which as far as I can see, are common talking points in the US.
So, repeating the question, what is every other developed country missing?
Why aren't they all doing this, if it's obviously superior?
Even if a free market could work in the US, I have no idea how we could get from here to there without making things worse along the way.
Oh, I know. I've tried getting prices in the past. Traditional providers can't do it. One thing that has opened my eyes is using a Direct Primary Care (DPC) provider. I pay $75 a month for direct access to my doctor (email, text message, cell phone etc.). The access is great, but an unexpected side benefit is that a large percentage of their patients are un/underinsured. They can quote the prices for most common procedures from memory.
The other day I was getting a blood test and they asked if I wanted to bill my insurance or pay cash for it. I asked about the cost and they said "two-sixty". My response: "For two hundred sixty bucks we better bill the insurance. They laughed: no, $2.60 (it was an add on to another test for my physical). When I got home I googled pricing - the exact same test normally bills for around $65.
We do not have a free market. Other countries seem to have solid solutions for "socializing" medicine. I can't think of any highly functional system that is a free market. I don't even think that one is possible without people dying in the streets. Thus the best way forward is to try what has been successful elsewhere.