Or becomes not one. We have a worse system than both free-market and single-payer, either would be more cost-effective.
We should work towards making healthcare cheap in absolute sense - if we could make healthcare cost on average 1000$ per person per year than the question who should foot the bill is moot - it will be such a small sum it won't matter.
> No sane person will buy brain surgery if he has no problems even if it 1$ and he has no choice but to buy one at whatever cost if he has.
So what? Also, if there are multiple methods to treat his conditions, he may choose more expensive(or more cheap) method. Also, he may choose not to have brain surgery -- and sadly suffer or die. Socialism is hardly a solution here, if state will fail to provide necessary amount of surgeons to fulfill demand for them, then people will die too(not mentioning that there always be better methods and better qualified surgeons, so you won't be able to achieve the same level of healthcare anyway).
A choice is when I have insurance and refuse chemo because the side effects outweigh the benefits.
I am not talking about socialism. I am talking that we should treat the healthcare system the same way that we treat power plants and energy distribution utilities. A system of grants and loans that ensures long term supply of goods. So you pay your bills each month but the government takes care of you not being price gouged (except in California)
In the US (disclaimer - most I know for the healthcare is from the media, non US citizen) a good starting point will be forfeiting and subsidizing medical education so the graduates will be loan free. Also the government should not leave R&D to the private sector but create human health Manhattan project - this will have the benefits of everything that comes out of it entering public domain so no royalties patents and other shit to take care of.
A good healthcare system should be like interstate etc. It is there it is low margin but enables the society to move faster towards the future.
The same is true in your system, substituting "afford" for whatever verb is better suited for your proposed system.
> Also the government should not leave R&D
Government leaving R&D to private sector(which is major source of funding even now, at least in the USA) would be the great decision. It will stop crowding out resources from private R&D, thus making R&D more effective and more beneficial to economy.
Patents are the separate issue. There is the flaw in your logic. Patents are government granted. You view them as undesirable, but your solution is even more government. However, the logical solution would be abolishing patents.
The only people who claim this are those who have no idea what constitutes anything near blue skies research. Anything worth looking into for the mid to long term is going to have questionable profit potential and therefore not conducive to profit seeking.
There's a reason why most research uni's are public and the results are dumped out for industry to exploit, and it's not because it steals the talent by paying so well.
> You view them as undesirable, but your solution is even more government. However, the logical solution would be abolishing patents.
So your plan is to incentivize private R&D by abolishing IP. Hahahahahaha.
Particularly since the drug must clear the FDA and there is potential for recall.
This is simply untrue, there is a great book by Terence Kealey: "Sex, science and profits", you should check it: http://amzn.com/B0045JKEQ2
> So your plan is to incentivize private R&D by abolishing IP. Hahahahahaha.
No, private R&D do not require additional incentives beyond those arising naturally by market forces.
Even though every other OECD country save Mexico provides more socialized medicine with essentially universal coverage, produces equal or better overall health outcomes than the US, and spends far less per capita and per GDP on health care than the US. But, yeah, sure, "socialism is no help here", because if it was, that would require people to reconsider their laissez-faire religion.
False. The RAND experiment shows that people's consumption of medicine is dependent on it's marginal cost to them. Higher levels of cost sharing induce people to reduce consumption of medicine by 30% (with no adverse health effects).
http://www.rand.org/health/projects/hie.html
The Oregon health study got similar results, although it demonstrated one adverse health effect of consuming less medicine, namely increased rates of depression.
By my friend that is on dialysis cannot use it 30% less in the long term without endangering her life or degrading her quality of life to the point of not worth living.
Fracture a bone - you can go without professional help - risking all kinds of nasty stuff that will get you into ER or limping for the rest of your life.
You can ignore the dermatitis but if a mole starts bleeding you MUST go to the dermatologist to check yourself for skin cancer. 30 percent less of the later checkups and you have a few corpses on your hand.