It's not unreasonable to argue for socialized healthcare based on treatment denials in private healthcare, since there are impactful differences in the incentives driving denials and rationing in private vs socialized healthcare. I agree that the argument should be more nuanced than just "denials happen".

The incentive for private health insurers is to raise prices and increase denial rate until people are unwilling or unable to pay. People will pay until they can't, since they don't want to die, so this can be pushed pretty far. The incentive for socialized healthcare, at least in principle, is to provide people with as much treatment as is feasible for the amount of incoming funds. In one case rationing is driven by a need to remain solvent and in the other case it's driven by profit maximization. The different incentives lead to significant differences in how people are impacted by the denials/rationing that necessarily exist in both systems.

There is no such incentive for private health insurers. You have completely misunderstood how the business works.

https://www.cms.gov/marketplace/private-health-insurance/med...

If there was no incentive for an entire class of businesses to do X, you would not have to actively work to stop them from doing X.

Absolutely you are 100% correct.

Socialized healthcare is not perfect.

But it is much, much better that what the US has now. Every other developed country spends vastly less and gets much better health outcomes. [1]

Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Adopt socialized healthcare now, even though it is imperfect, and then work on improving it as time goes on. That is the path to making stuff better.

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy-vs-health...

It isn't a case of perfect being the enemy of good, it is that you're looking at what might potentially be the most corrupt, captured and incapable healthcare regulator in the modern world and advocating that they get even more power. That seems like a bad strategy. The US healthcare system won't be fixed by dissociating patients from the process even further.

The obvious thing to do is move power away from the regulator and make it easier for consumers to pay directly for treatment. It works for almost everything else.

There is still out-of-network healthcare (i.e. specific services or entire healthcare providers not covered by single payer) in many countries with universal healthcare. But it is usually clear which is which.

> There is still out-of-network healthcare in many countries with universal healthcare

Can you provide links?

I've personally used the healthcare systems in Australia and Canada for two decades each, and also for a short time in the UK. I've never heard of this.

There is a small handful of clinics in Japan that do not accept the universal health insurance, such as specialist ones targeting English-speaking expats.

Example: https://www.nmclinic.net/index.html#about

BUPA is the largest private healthcare provider in the UK: https://www.bupa.co.uk/

The treatment provided will be similar to the NHS, but with less waiting (if relevant) and nicer facilities, such as private rooms rather than shared wards in hospital.

Link: https://www.reginamaria.ro/ - one of the biggest networks in the country. I have to use it for most of the regular stuff and I pay a subscription plus out of pocket for some consultations. This is on top of paying 10% of my gross income to socialized healthcare money stealing scheme.