Yes. I remember when we had it here. In the 70's we were seeing huge inflation in medical costs. That's why businesses started requiring co-pays and deductibles. The AMA assured everyone they would police themselves, and they did nothing. The government talked, and they did nothing. So the insurance companies stepped in and started creating HMOs and the like. In essence, precisely what you are talking about with the added incentive of profit for the insurance carriers. Until that became untenable as well. If you recall, before the first Obama administration both sides of the aisle were saying it was a major problem and needed to be fixed.
Returning to the good old days simply returns you to the start of the problem. It does not resolve the problem.
What we have is the most expensive health care in the world, not the best. The top ten health care systems (of which we are not one) are all nationalized systems. That is according to Forbes, which I don't think anyone can call a hotbed of liberal thought.
U.S. Healthcare Ranked Dead Last Compared To 10 Other Countries - Forbes
Well...
I wasn't around in the 70's, well for half of it but my attention was focused more on cookie monster than HC. So I'll have to just take your word at face value. However, for whatever problems there were in the 70's, the "solutions" have obviously created bigger ones, the the solution for those problems have create even bigger ones.
Rather than create one massively expensive problem that we all end up paying for in gross federal expenditures, rationing, long waits and substandard care, why not return to the system we had? There were problems with it, but lets look for different solutions this time. I hear all sorts of people say the same thing you did, that we don't have the best system, that other countries single payer systems are better.
I don't buy it for two reasons, and they're both based on my personal experience.
First, I lived in Buff NY 20 years ago, we had all of 5 channels. The Simpsons came on a Toronto station at 6 pm so while we were doing our "pre-show bong ritual" we would have Toronto's local news going. I can still remember seeing countless reports of inadequacies, long lines, and shortages of personel/resources in their NHC system. This was while HitlaryCare was being debated, and even as a bunch of stoned 20 somethings we usually agreed that having government involved in HC was not the answer. We knew the government fucked up nearly everything it touched. The canadian license plates in area hospitals further proved it. I was still somewhat liberal back then, and I still didn't trust government.
Of course back then, it was my belief that not trusting government and rejecting authority made you a liberal. Modern liberals disgust me with their servile devotion to what I consider a giant goat orgy with footballbats.
Secondly as I described earlier, I've seen the system first hand in the Philippines. As I understand it, it's far superior to ours in that everyone can still get basic treatment and not end up going bankrupt. Knowing Canadians had to flee south to get routine procedures, I do not relish having to spend $2500+ on a round trip ticket to get affordable HC in a reasonable amount of time because my own country followed the path of most resistance and joined the world in this fools errand of "universal" healthcare.
The euroweenies may love their system. Fine keep it.
I'm not a euroweenie. My ancestry fled europe because it was becoming what it is. There's no place left for people like me to go beyond a few archepeligos in the Pacific. If they already have the shit these statist liberals want in europe, why can't they go there?
I was in the 70's. I started working in the 60's, so I know what health care was during both times. What made the whole thing more and more expensive is that it became, and remains to this day, all about money. First the health care industry and then the insurance industry, all focusing on the maximization of profit.
Do you know it is illegal to import drugs from Canada to here? That is because Americans are flocking to Canada to obtain that which they can't afford here. I too had an experience when a friend of mine was injured on a trip to Canada. I spent hours in an ER waiting for him, no longer than I would have spent in any ER in the US, and at the end he had to pay in cash and they wouldn't take his insurance. The bill was about $400. Can you imagine what the bill would have been if the hospital had been across the river in NY?
No system is going to be perfect, but simply because the best systems happen to be in Europe and Canada do not make them bad. The one thing we pretty much all agree is that our system is broken. But it was broken when it was run the way you say it should be run. I really don't think it is a good idea to go back to something that did not work before and expect it to work now. The others apparently do work. It seem illogical to me to reject something shown to be successful for something shown to be unsuccessful on the basis of ideology.
