I simply do not believe that healthcare can be completely private.
Then you simply aren't thinking it through enough. More economics education will help with that. :thumbsup:
Lets say you need to see a highly specialised brain surgeon that went through 15 years of training, there's only a few of them in the country but someone with more money needs to see him too. Who do you think will get taken care of? You're going to be outbid. In any other industry you simply can't afford the product and you move on, in the healthcare industry you die instead.
You do realize that in a free market there will be more of these highly specialised brain surgeons, right? When the market is not regulated, demand creates supply every single time.
There are too many specialties and not enough supply due to the high barrier of entry (10 years of training), doctors can charge whatever they like and so they should. You can't compare doctors fees like you can a mobile phone. You can't bargain with them and you can't just shop elsewhere.
10 years of training is not a barrier to such a career. People who want to be brain surgeons do not say: "I'd love to do it but 10 years it just too long for me to study in order to reach my life's dream..." It's always a matter of money. Surgeons-to-be can't wait 10 years now because IT COSTS TOO MUCH to wait ten years... But with a free market on medical school meeting the demand of the public's need for brain surgeons, it won't cost so much.
Simple economics. Take away all of the restrictions and demand always creates supply, every time.
So what if he can't afford it? Bad luck ay? I'm perfectly happy for a small portion of my taxes to go towards this.
1. You do not get to speak for the rest of your country. No man does, save your PM. Please watch that "George ought to help" video posted above in this thread for more on why it is IMMORAL AND WRONG to think this way in the first place.
2. When giving your consent for the gov to tax YOU, you are giving the Gov more power. Sure, that doesn't sound so bad to an Ozzie in the year 2012, but what happens if by 2025 your country is being run by the same kind of scum we have? They just keep on taking more and more from us and the way they got started was our consent to let them do it many years beforehand... Every little piece of consent to take from you adds up until you eventually have nothing left to give them.
...the problem is that US citizens would be in this same situation in their own country if they didn't have insurance. And if they can't afford it well bad luck, you can just die.
I would really like to understand how you think this is ok.
First of all, VERY LITTLE that happens in my country on a policy level is "OK" with me. But you're representing the situation wrong. We wouldn't just die, we would get a bigass $300k bill here from the hospital. It is illegal for doctors to turn away imminently life-saving treatment here for lack of coin.
Sure we might wake up with our houses in hock, but doctors still swear the Hippocratic oath here and remember, the hippocratic oath is not sworn to a government, but to your industry.
It's the government that brings all of the evil into the healthcare business. The only people who don't see it this way yet simply haven't contemplated the industry without the government in some part of it yet. (It's kinda hard to do, I understand. But one day with study you may do so.)
