| Somebody is paying for it. If not insurance companies, then the people through the government. As a citizen of a country with socialized health care, I will tell you the politicians promise the world but when the bill comes they can't seem to find their way out of the room fast enough. The only way to avoid this adversarial relationship is to pay for it yourself. No insurance, no government, nothing. That means vast amounts of people will not be able to afford even a doctor's private practice. It's sad but the bitter truth is nobody really wants to pay for other people's health care either. They only say they do because it wins them votes or clients. They all can't leave the room fast enough when the bill actually comes. Politicians have other far grander things they'd rather do with all that taxpayer money, and that's when they're not corrupt and pocketing it. Insurers obviously want profit. They're all betting you won't actually need all that fancy schmancy health care they promised you. They're literally banking on it. In my experience, people barely want to pay for their own health care. They "want" to but start appealing to the altruism of their fellow man the second the bill comes. In my country, doctors are shamed every day because of our "oath" to help others. People act like we are their slaves, not even entitled to payment for services rendered. The good doctor is the one who pursues medicine as a hobby, who walks the earth helping others in need, with no needs of his own to tend to. The good doctor somehow absorbs the costs of it all. Including the costs of the cures involved. Especially the opportunity costs. People are not prepared for the soulless utilitarianism of public health care. The bitter truth is there aren't enough medical resources for everybody. You must pick and choose who gets that fancy MRI scan. If you pick right you kill people. If you pick wrong you kill even more people. You have hundreds of millions of citizens, how do you help as many as possible as much as possible with the resources available? Decentralization via hundreds of basic clinics and hospitals turns out to be better than centralizing everything into one well equipped giga hospital. It's not about any one guy. It's about saving costs now so that you can help more people later. That's what primary care is all about. Saving costs, by promoting healthy lifestyles which means less sick people later in life where treatment is more expensive. It's about money, about resources. But people don't want that. Good lifestyles are hard to lead, they require sacrifices. They want to do whatever they want, then go to the doctors when they get sick, then they want others to pay for whatever's necessary to fix it, and they want it fixed good as new. They are like consumers who don't want to pay for the services they need. Nobody wants to pay for it, even the people who directly need the services. |