Originally Posted by
Emily's Cat
In my view, the challenge in the US is one of infrastructure. It's that the industry itself has evolved in a for-profit environment, and the insurance mechanism evolved with it. Insurance invariably disrupts the supply-demand curve, because the financial intermediary explicitly protects the consumer of the good from the true cost of the good. The net effect of this is that the presence of a protective financial intermediary invariably increases the cost of the good sold. What we've ended up with is a highly entwined system. The number of people working in the medical industry (not just nurses and doctors, but the encompassing system of devices, orderlies, drug chemists, insurance agents, etc.) is very large, because the cost of the product is high... which is high because the industry exists in the form it does.
If you change that structure too quickly (a sudden shift to single-payer universal health care) without due consideration of the intricacies... you create many other subsidiary problems. How much of a spike in unemployment is acceptable in order to reduce the health care cost burden? If we switch it all to single-payer, how many people will be out of work, and how much will that increase the financial burden in other areas?
Intellectually I can argue for single-payer universal coverage... but only if I compartmentalize it and ignore all of the secondary impacts.
Exactly we are stuck with these massive and increasing costs because the pain of switching to a more efficient system is too high.
Though of course as your job is an example of one that going to universal health care would like drive out of the job market you are not exactly an unbiased individual.