[Kerb_]

>Rationing care, deciding who lives or dies, underpaying doctors and nurses till the best ones quit and the remaining have any care burned out of them

This is literally happening under the current system now. My cancer treatment plan, should I ever get it while I'm living in America, is to blow all my cash and buy an exit bag on credit.

[polygamous_bat]

What scares some people is not that rationing care may already exist but that there may not be any fast-track line you can buy your way into.

[sfink]

A lot of countries have both nationalized care and the fast track. Many people buy private insurance to cover what the national system does not.

Maybe it's not the best of both worlds, but it's at least a far better safety net than the US provides, and that's the most critical piece. Both for the most affected individuals, and society as a whole (even in terms of cost! An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and all that.)

[dzink]

There are medical company systems in the US that operate similarly to a nationalized system (insurer and provider bundled, I’m not mentioning the name) and have similar downsides - cancer care or any advanced care is sub-par and mental health is hard to impossible to get. The funding to physicians within is distributed on political instead of performance grounds so best ones leave. I’ve lost several friends who used that insurance.

In Bulgaria where I have many friends and family, the system has always been nationalized, barely funded by the government. I don’t know a single Cancer survivor there.