Government-sponsored monopolies produce economy-wrecking effects. National health systems are that.
How to fix the American health system in several easy steps, from a governmental perspective:
* Stop all current governmental subsidies
* Outlaw medical insurance
* Purchase expensive medical equipment, and most importantly the means of production of such equipment, and resell to new medical enterprises at a reasonable price (most likely resulting in a severe loss)
* Provide a matching program on qualifying doctors' medical school debt
* Radically reform and/or remove medical licensing programs to focus on apprenticeship more than academics
* Reform pharmaceutical patent protections to allow drugs to proliferate freely
This will get us to a ground-up, self-sustainable medical system that is based on ordinary rules of supply and demand, without giving a blank check to the administrators of the current system, which is already irrevocably corrupted by paper-pushers. The whole thing just has to be torn down and started over.
In an ideal world I'd probably agree with you. But what you're proposing is even less likely to happen (particularly the pharmaceutical patent reform) that a national health system.
How to fix the American health system in several easy steps, from a governmental perspective:
* Stop all current governmental subsidies
* Outlaw medical insurance
* Purchase expensive medical equipment, and most importantly the means of production of such equipment, and resell to new medical enterprises at a reasonable price (most likely resulting in a severe loss)
* Provide a matching program on qualifying doctors' medical school debt
* Radically reform and/or remove medical licensing programs to focus on apprenticeship more than academics
* Reform pharmaceutical patent protections to allow drugs to proliferate freely
This will get us to a ground-up, self-sustainable medical system that is based on ordinary rules of supply and demand, without giving a blank check to the administrators of the current system, which is already irrevocably corrupted by paper-pushers. The whole thing just has to be torn down and started over.