The cost of "free" health care

The price of a single-payer system is too high to pay:

Doctors would have set hours due to being employed by the government which is great”¦ except when you look at the shortage of doctors in rural areas. If a doctor in such an area has a set limit of patients he/she can see per year then inevitably there could be months when no physician in such an area was available.

Here’s my biggest beef with single-payer: physicians will be at the mercy of a monopoly with zero recourse to fight back.

Currently, physicians have the choice of dropping Medicare/Medicaid if payments continue to be slashed. Not so with single-payer. The government will be the only game in town.

If you think that doctors are losing professional control now, imagine being at the whim of a monopoly. If the single-payer chooses to drop payment rates or expand hours (yes, I’m aware the NHS is not single-payer, but you get my point) there nothing a physician can do. Except bend over or quit medicine. Why would any doctor agree to that?

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