You walked right into it.
What makes you think private business are capable of delivering something cheaper than what the government can do? The most expensive health care in the world is private.
IE they had to provide care to everyone at a reasonable price.
I'm deeply suspicious of healthcare that gets to exclude people for cost reasons.
I too can provide great healthcare if everyone is mandated to pay me for my services and I get to exclude those I treat, that's a great business, the healthy pay and I exclude the sick, what wonderful pure profit business!
The insurance model bothers me for that reason, they really shouldn't be allowed to exclude anyone, if they're taking on the business of healthcare, then that's that, they are providing a utility service, which means they supply to everyone and they make money by spreading the cost between everyone.
There are nuances to that, but practically that's the goal they should aspire to, but unfortunately that model isn't the most profitable.
I mean take a look at the original US health insurance that existed:
> The first plan guaranteed teachers 21 days of hospital care for $6 a year, and was later extended to other employee groups in Dallas, and then nationally [0]
That insurance model worked, it just happened to get outcompeted by entities who were willing to undercut them by aiming to capture only the most healthy people, which is in effect a tragedy of the commons.
Which is a real problem in my book, I'd be fascinated to see what innovations a private company could come up with under that model. We might have missed out on a whole slew of interesting ideas if we kept going down that route, which would still have been a pretty profitable business and would have been a great success for those who do believe that the private space can do healthcare better.
As it stands I don't believe the current private model meets that criteria as it fails at the first hurdle of being a health care service, it doesn't care about health.
So it seems like the choices are bad private care, good public care and bad public care. So yea, I'm leaning to the good public care.
- [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Cross_Blue_Shield_Associa...
E.g. saying a state-run car company would've done better because all that profit money would've been perfectly allocated is not right. Otherwise the government's perfect decision-makers would be starting car companies left and right and making a fortune, instead of working for the government.
In things that affect your health, I don't want to be the guinea pig that discovers the service I paid for wasn't up to standard. That provider may go bust in the long run, but in the meantime will do a lot of damage.
"Bob Lutz compares Tesla to socialism after GM took $11B from taxpayers under his reign"
https://electrek.co/2016/08/18/bob-lutz-compares-tesla-socia...
I agree that cars are much better than they were 10 years ago. Thanks mostly to government regulations that the incumbent industry fought strongly, while Chinese state owned firms were taking advantage of the opportunity.
Roads aren't cars? I'm not saying that central planning is never a good idea, just that it's mostly not a good idea. "Where to put roads that a private company will build" is a reasonable role of government in a capitalist society.
> and then getting bailed out
I don't think they should've been bailed out. That was politicians buying car worker votes by doing politician things, like inflating the currency to make everyone's wages worth less.
Cars are better not mostly because of regulations, but because of manufacturing improvements, electronic/chip hardware and software improvements, and, most of all, competition.
The more-well-off also think Tory policies will get them a house and security. In practice, the UK housing market is completely fucked and gets more so every year, but... it doesn't stop people believing it.
Basically the health of the NHS is about the tenth thing on some people's minds when voting, until they get cancer or break an arm, at which point they start complaining about it.
Clearly the solution is probably somewhere in between, but political polarization has simply pushed people to their party lines and entrenched their positions such that no real progress can happen while things continue to fall apart.