there is virtues to both sides of the economic argument.
you feel like grabbing a burger. You walk into the nearest burger joint and look at the price. You'll then make a decision to see if the benefits of eating that burger outweight the cost of buying it. If the burger costs 50 bucks, most people would just say fuck that and either get an alternative product or just not eat. A burger shop charging $50 would probably have a hard time finding customers who are willing to pay that price, and they would need to drop their price.
What if the burger was subsidized in some way? Maybe your government has a plan to give everyone access to burgers as needed, or perhaps you are paying a monthly fee for some form of burger insurance. When you are hungry, you'll just go take your burger because there is no immediate cost to you. The same burger joint charging $50 can probably stay in business because people who previously would not have paid that price can now give in to impulse without any opportunity cost.
One benefit of this is that the quality of food you are eating is probably way beyond what you would normally get. If they get 50 bucks of revenue for every unit sold, then they can still make a great profit while selling a no-compromise product.
on the flip side, if the burger joint was not subsidized and people were paying out of pocket, then there is now a push for the business to make itself more efficient. They will look for ways to produce the same product at a cheaper price. Over time, people should be able to buy a great burger at a better price.
Laser eye surgery is viewed as elective and not often covered by healthcare. Initially it was very expensive and not that great. They could either make the operation cheaper or they could make it better. So, the price stayed at the same level but laser eye surgery improved to a point where it was worth it for a lot of people. Then, they focused on making the business more efficient so they could offer the same quality product at a cheaper price. now this surgery is affordable by a good chunk of the population. If this was socialized, there would have never been the push to drop the price.
Now one way that the burger argument does not translate over to healthcare is that peoples needs for the products are quite different. If you are abolutely starving and buying that burger is the difference between life and death, then yeah you might sell your house to buy it. If there was a monopoly on food they could charge whatever the fuck they wanted because people would not have a choice. I can see that this would be a pretty common situation with healthcare. Having some government involvement can help reduce the possibility of this kind of abuse. Plus, it can help maintain a minimum level of quality.
I guess the point of this whole thing is that the existence of insurance makes healthcare inefficient for the same reasons that government subsidized healthcare is inefficient. It's just on different levels.
