The Logic of Liberty: Whose Responsibility Is Your Health?
#22, Roy – You state that UK taxpayers get a better deal than US taxpayers – but your reason seems to be the most of the beneficiaries of US public health care are NOT taxpayers. That’s hardly a legitimate comparison or argument for supporting socialist health care!
And no, your argument seems to suggest that IF the UK citizen doesn’t like the public health care, that they have the option of purchasing private health care insurance. This is fallacious. You do NOT have the option of purchasing insurance for standard health care.
And you haven’t provided any evidence that the UK (or Canadian) health care is ‘good enough’ to preclude purchasing private insurance, because your basic argument for such a purchase is flawed. Again, you cannot purchase private insurance to cover standard healh care! You can only purchase it for optional coverage, for such extra non-standard services as cosmetic surgery, obesity and fertility treatments, etc.
These private health care policies do NOT cover the health services covered by the public system. You cannot declare that you want ‘superior treatment’ for your influenza and receive such compensation from your private health care plan. It covers only those areas not funded by the public system.
Therefore your argument that IF someone in the UK does NOT purchase private insurance, THEN this means that their health care system is sufficient is invalid. The questions ought to focus on the availability of the standard health care treatments and the costs. In the UK and Canada, as pointed out, treatments are either non-existent, delayed or slow, or reduced and rationed in number, quality and availability.
http://www.angelfire.com/pa/sergeman/issues/healthcare/socialized.html
The reason is simple: costs. This is due to the escalation of users of the tax money. You cannot fund any public system by taxes while increasing the costs of that system! The costs of a public system increase because the number of users massively increases AND the costs of a mediating bureaucracy bloat the system! If you increase taxes to pay for this double-whammy, you put the economy at risk because you reduce the capital held by citizens for business investment and development.
