Heath insurance programs take extremely expensive costs in the grounds of welfare state policies. To people, is inconceivable to live with private investiments in heath. The compulsive taxes make everyone pay, and only a few are aware of the monetary costs.
Maybe in other sectors welfare state policies end well, but I doubt this happen frequently.
An interesting choice of example. The USA is just about the only otherwise-civilized state that largely leaves healthcare in private hands, and “only a few are aware” (as you put it) that the US government spends about as much per capita on healthcare as, say, the UK government—to be more precise: only two other OECD countries have more government spending on healthcare than the US—and that total US healthcare expenditure is hugely more than that of any other country, and yet its actual outcomes are pretty much on a par with all those other countries that are spending so much less. (E.g., if you order countries by life expectancy at birth, the US comes in at about #50.)
Of course this is a complicated business, obviously affected by other things besides the public/private difference. But, to say the least, the available evidence doesn’t offer much support for the idea that a welfare state providing health insurance ends up being more expensive and less efficient. The only good example we’ve got of taking a different approach goes quite the other way.
Heath insurance programs take extremely expensive costs in the grounds of welfare state policies. To people, is inconceivable to live with private investiments in heath. The compulsive taxes make everyone pay, and only a few are aware of the monetary costs.
Maybe in other sectors welfare state policies end well, but I doubt this happen frequently.
An interesting choice of example. The USA is just about the only otherwise-civilized state that largely leaves healthcare in private hands, and “only a few are aware” (as you put it) that the US government spends about as much per capita on healthcare as, say, the UK government—to be more precise: only two other OECD countries have more government spending on healthcare than the US—and that total US healthcare expenditure is hugely more than that of any other country, and yet its actual outcomes are pretty much on a par with all those other countries that are spending so much less. (E.g., if you order countries by life expectancy at birth, the US comes in at about #50.)
Of course this is a complicated business, obviously affected by other things besides the public/private difference. But, to say the least, the available evidence doesn’t offer much support for the idea that a welfare state providing health insurance ends up being more expensive and less efficient. The only good example we’ve got of taking a different approach goes quite the other way.