Come to the UK, it's free.
Procedures are so expensive, doctors so highly paid, and insurers so profitable that the US is essentially subsidizing all that while still not providing universal healthcare.
In the UK we're both taxed less AND don't have to have private insurance due to the above. (It does have some downsides though, particularly in not being able to easily 'shop around' or get access to cutting edge/experimental medicine.. it's a bit one size fits all.)
EDIT: hm, not sure about 'experimental', but top quality/teaching hospitals anyway.
So no, it is certainly not "free".
(And yes, people in Scandinavia stating things are "free" is a rant-trigger for me.)
Everyone here knows that it's not "free" but subsidised by taxes. That's what "free" means when talking about healthcare, free at the point of service, and free as equally available to everyone.
How else would it work? Are the doctors without pay and with no equipment?
Not only that, but if you're using money, it's much easier to use someone else's money instead of your own, you just won't be too careful about how you spend it. In fact, if you've got a "limitless" supply of other people's money, you just won't give a fuck about what you do with it. This is one reason why public healthcare (and public anything) turns to shit sooner or later.
Sounds logical on paper but doesn't bear out in reality - just about every country where health care is provided via "confiscated funds" pays dramatically less for better outcomes than the USA where people are responsible for spending their own money.
The Parasite(tm) is more bedtime-story boogeyman than observed reality. They exist, but in far fewer numbers than reported, and their effects on the system far less grave than prognosticated.
In Canada, where I'm from, most of the people I know avoid doctors and hospitals unless they really aren't feeling good. They don't want the hassle of waiting and waiting again to see specialists or get a procedure of some kind done.
The canadian socialized system is still really, really slow though for non emergency care but I never believed it was because of parasites wasting hospital resources.
The US healthcare system is truly fucked, but serves as another great example of how people use someone else's money. That's why healthcare is so absurdly expensive there. Patients generally aren't using their own money to pay for medical services, and so, insurance companies get charged ridiculous prices behind the scenes, and the customer doesn't care. Businesses are forced to buy insurance, right?
Well, without the "forced middlemen" of insurance companies, and with customers paying for whatever services they use, you can bet your ass that health care would be massively cheaper. Competition drives quality up, and prices down.
>> The Parasite(tm) is more bedtime-story boogeyman than observed reality
I hadn't even heard of that "theory". But I bet I would have, if I were still watching Bill Maher's show.
You're right in that some parasite patients are not the problem. The whole system is.
Think about it. If you're running a hospital on a "limitless" supply of other people's money (as in, "public healthcare"), you're just not that concerned with efficiency, nor the quality of your services, because you don't have to be. It doesn't matter if your customers are unhappy, because you'll still be getting your money! .. It's blindingly obvious that this kind of system is doomed, but of course, healthcare is not socialized in order to make it better. It's socialized to make the masses dependent on the State.