What are the unforeseen consequences of government provided healthcare?

Less incentive to be the best doctor in your field.

As a patient you do not want a “decent” doctor, you want the highest quality. Quality meaning the best possible doctor for what you are willing to pay. Understanding the quality you can afford in a government provided health care system compared to a competitive, completely government-free, insurance-free health care system is critical for intelligent decision making on this important issue.

The concept of a completely government-free health care system must be understood. This means no government regulations, tax incentives, and even government regulation of health insurance. No other environment creates a better incentive for doctors, hospitals and their staff to perform optimally. Hospitals will set their own standards and regulations for their employees, facilities and procedures which will be based on safety, cost efficiency and effective long lasting results. As hospitals compete for patients all of these things improve resulting in less waste created and safer procedures. This is the result of the demand of consumers to be provided and pay for the best service by competing hospitals.

Advancements in procedures and technology

Rapid advancements in procedures and technology to provide the fastest and safest visit would be the result of a bureaucracy free structure. The way in which a hospital operates along with the technology available will advance so rapidly that cures for common ailments and surgical procedures will become faster, safer and to top it all off the costs to consumers will continually decline. You can use any free-market based products or services to prove this phenomenon. An excellent example of rapid technology advancement can be seen all around us with one of the best examples being the computer industry. The product life cycle for a laptop is 6 months! That means if you bought a laptop today, in 6 months it would be obsolete. You would be able to buy a new laptop with many more options for less money than the one you just bought 6 months ago. That is the result of a consumer driven competitive, bureaucracy free business environment. Why would anyone want themselves or their loved ones to be taken care of in any other type of environment when sick or injured?

Because of this the dollar in this market would continually become stronger, meaning you would be able to buy more for your money every year! Better treatment for less, safer treatment for less, new treatments we would have never thought of for less! More people would be able to afford services provided by hospitals. Not only would services be more affordable but as pointed out earlier these services would be safer and faster.

Hospitals would be freer to pursue specialties depending on the market where they are based. Some would specialize in disease treatment while others specialize in spinal surgery or heart surgery or surgery on children much more so than they do now. Some hospitals may be funded completely by donations instead of taxes which means their would be very inexpensive or even free hospital care for certain people including illegal immigrants, poor children or whoever donors want to help. This would be much more feasible because the costs of running a hospital would be so much less because of the lack of bureaucracy. Their has never been a crisis in this country where people didn't give their time and money to help others in need. Donations to hospitals that are efficient and effective in helping those in need would have no problem raising money.

Quality of Government provided health care

In a government provided health care system all incentive to be the best doctor in your field is removed. The incentive now will be place on turning the profession of a doctor into a politician/government official. Because of the waste created in an inefficient, tax funded, bureaucracy laden system the costs will always rise, meaning less money for everyone not just the people who see a doctor or visit a hospistal. Because healthcare would be paid for by taxes or "free" people will go to the doctor for everything possible creating incredible waiting lines and a shortage of doctors to take care of all the people who are trying to milk a system that gives them everything at the expense of everyone. Because of these problems the bureaucracy will grow to try and deter the problems that the bureaucracy created in the first place and to top it all off, you are paying more and more every year for a service where the quality continually declines. A perfect example of this would be any government run monopoly system such as our education system which is paid for property owners through governement force.

Our best doctors will leave our country to go to markets where they are compensated for being the best at what they do. Only the rich and politicians will be able to go see these doctors because you know they won’t tolerate waiting in line for months to be treated by mediocre doctors. (They shouldn't be allowed to be in tat system anyways since they don’t pay taxes which will be the funding source for the system)

In a completely free market health care system what you would be able to afford would be safer, faster and of much higher quality than a health care system provided by the government and paid for by everyone!

To be continued…