So your answer is for government to step in and offer healthcare instead? This would result in even less choices considering it would crowd out all other participants until government healthcare is the only one left. Is that your idea of giving people choices?

Maybe it's a better option but let's be real that's the opposite of giving people a choice.

Thunderfoot did a video on coronavirus that included a comparison of China's numbers to other countries and they seem to be legit.

His point is that by offering "choice" in the form of health insurance provider you are limiting people's choices in other ways, like limiting their ability to change jobs since health insurance plans will be variable between employers.

It's not a matter of "X offers more choice than Y", it's a matter of "X offers different choices than Y"

This.

Having a central health negotiator, like the UK's NHS, allows for much more negotiating leverage and power, because if hospitals want to operate in the UK they have virtually no choice but to accept the Master List charges that the NHS agrees to. There's a reason why the US spends a higher % of GDP on healthcare and that our per-service costs are so much higher than other countries. Insurance companies aren't as competitive as some people make them out to be, and we literally pay more as a result.

Cool so you're saying the centralized system is better, maybe so, probably so. That doesn't change the fact that it would result in less choice as government essentially pushes out all private insurers. Even in my mid-size city there is half a dozen insurers, at least, probably more. If we had single payer, those cease to exist, and there's 1 choice. Again, less choice not more. That's the point we're talking about not which is potentially better.

This post was edited by ofthevoid on Mar 25 2020 09:17pm

It would offer less choice in who your insurance provider is, but drastically more choice in what you can do since you don't have to worry about insurance, and what doctors you can see since there wouldn't be restrictive networks.

It would not result in less choice, it would result in different choices being available.

I think it's a bit more nuanced than that though. Yes, there's less choice in coverage provider under a single-payer system, but you actually have more choice when it comes to seeking the actual healthcare as you are not as limited by in-network limitations, and you don't have massive premiums and co-pays that, for many people who live paycheck to paycheck, limits your choice of which healthcare priorities you choose to address.

Everybody who's put off treatment because they couldn't pay please raise your hand

*raises hand* (put off a root canal for like 2 years because I didn't have dental)

Bitch ass Kaiser tried to charge me out-of-pocket for seeing an "out-of-network" dermatologist despite sending an authorization. They even sent me to a collection agency, and I quickly assured them that "I am not the one. Try me".

Maybe in the upside down.

Currently we have disparity in insurance costs because people choose how much they want covered. Some people are okay with a HSA others want coverage that would cover six figures worth of operations, emergencies, etc. Under a single payer the people that want bare bones healthcare don't have a choice in trying to spend less, they will be forced to spend. That's not giving people different choices. That's socializing the costs, with the really healthy being asked to contribute more considering the get relatively less utility.

Like i said maybe on the aggregate it's the better utilitarian way but stop changing the definitions to words, it doesn't lead to more choices.

This post was edited by ofthevoid on Mar 25 2020 09:28pm