[NTJedi]

Originally Posted by quantum_mechani

All I can say is I am slightly boggled by this point of view. Is it really worth letting innocent but unlucky people go without health care just because a few people abuse the system? I mean, abuse of the system is unfortunate but a little more taxes won't kill anyone, as opposed to the alternative. And it's not like the vast majority of people that can't afford health care don't work, either.

It's not simple to understand, but the fastest explanation is we have to look at long term solutions and not the short term solutions. The united states is a huge country with millions of homeless and its not just the homeless that are currently without healthcare. A universal healthcare would not only be more costly, but it would introduce several new problems.

First and probably least important would be everyone paying higher taxes. As I've written before our government has problems with existing departments and giving them a new responsibility would only bring new problems.

Second our doctors would be changed to a fixed government income, currently many of the best doctors from Canada move to America because of much higher pay which is the result of competition from doctor offices and specialized treatment centers. What do you think will happen within the USA to doctors once they're told the government is now the source of their future fixed income. As mentioned in other forums they will be moving out of the country to setup their offices and treatment centers.

Third and quite serious would be massively longer waiting times when going to the hospitals and offices. Currently the waiting period is 3hours at the hospitals for Urgent Care, yet this will drastically increase. There's plenty of reports describing how Europeans travel to other countries for healthcare because the waiting times are unreasonably long. The next time I have a kidney stone I don't want to discover the average waiting time is now 24hours.

Fourth is the government will never release healthcare responsibility once started, because its another source for taking money from the people. This means IF the universal healthcare changes everyones healthcare into a nightmare we will be permanently stuck under government control. The people won't be able to say, "WAIT... change it back because I didn't expect X and Y to be one of the side effects."


I believe that someday... it's possible for our government to be wise enough and experienced enough to handle a great responsiblity such as universal healthcare. Without a doubt our government cannot handle such a responsibility today and it would be a mistake.