Should the U.S. Have Free Healthcare?
2 Arguments Against Free Healthcare
- When people don’t pay the true cost of something, they tend to consume it inefficiently. We eat more than normal when we go to a buffet. The same thing happens if health care was free: people would consume more of it than if they were charged the sticker price. Meaning, more people go to doctors and wait times increase for everyone.
- What if everyone got free public transport?
Arguments For Free Healthcare
Americans spend 2x more on healthcare per capita than Canadians — $10,900 vs $5,300 — yet it’s life expectancy is 3 years less than Canada. In fact, 27 countries have longer life expectancy than the US does even though it spends the most!
Looking at Health expenditure as a percent of GDP, the United States spend 16% of GDP while most other Western Democracies spend 9%-11%.
A hip operation in Belgium costs $13,360 (including the round-trip airfare from the US) while an identical procedure in the US costs over $78,000!
The reason for this discrepancy has to do with healthcare inflation in the U.S. Since 1983, inflation in medical care outpaces general inflation plus housing and even education inflation.
It’s one thing to maintain that health-care is my personal choice and responsibility, but quite another when the only way I can satisfy my needs in the market is by paying exorbitant premiums to inefficient, gargantuan, highly bureaucratized and highly profitable insurance companies. Health insurance companies have inefficiency costs that are very high compared to Medicare.
Under the current US system, rich, insured patients visit doctors more than they need, running up costs, while poor patients cannot afford even simple, inexpensive treatments and die younger than they should.
