Socialized Medicine costs (us) and kills (us)

Post #1008

In the Vice Presidential debate last night, Norah O’Donnell asked JD Vance if he was going to get rid of the socialized medicine that we have in the United States, though she phrased it differently, so that it would seem like JD Vance is a mean guy if he said “Yes!”:

“NORAH O’DONNELL: Thank you. One of the top problems facing Americans is the high cost of health care. Senator Vance, at the last Presidential debate, former President Trump was asked about replacing the Affordable Care act. In response, he said, I have concepts of a plan. Since then, Senator, you've talked about changing how chronically ill Americans get health insurance. Can you explain how that would work? And can you guarantee that Americans with pre-existing conditions won't pay more? I'll give you two minutes.”

It is funny how Norah admits that, with the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in place, healthcare costs have been skyrocketing. A big problem with ACA is that health insurance firms cozy up to the government and obtain restrictions on the type of competition in the market which could have brought the prices down:

Notice the darkest section at the bottom, where people could choose from 5 or more plans. By 2018, things had gotten so bad that only 14% of Americans could do that. All other shades are harmful to prices. A rule of thumb for a market which is not free enough to bring prices down is when the top-5 firms control over 60% of the market:

And in all but that darkest bottom section of the previous graph, 4 or fewer firms controlled 100% of the market — preventing the price competition that could have brought the prices down. The result of such a restriction of competition is huge profits for the industry, including more than 9% revenue growth:

Effects also shows up in the healthcare prices (the service which the health insurance companies are supposed to pay for):

Besides paying so much, Americans also have less choice in healthcare. The government, by socializing medicine, has created a protected market that funnels people through approved plans and procedures, and subsidizes a restricted number of providers:

Prior to 1920, there was a free market in medicine, and private providers competed for consumer dollars. The government was not in the business of providing healthcare to people. The USA is now much worse than the world average in expense for healthcare:

The graph above reveals that 18 cents of every dollar spent in the USA is spent on health care. This is appalling. It is even worse in the USA — than it is in the world as a whole — when just considering government (fully-socialized) expense:

Of every dollar spent in the USA, more than 10 cents of it is actually the government buying someone’s healthcare for them. And perhaps worst of all, after all of that centralization of healthcare — i.e., after moving so far away from having a free market in medicine — we die more. Here is the excess death record during COVID:

The evidence suggests that there are two outcomes to expect by turning toward socialized medicine:

1. higher costs

2. lower health