Much of the spending in the US is on the high salaries on people working in the health industry. If the government runs it you can cut down the high salaries. The high salaries is the main cause why you have to pay som much for medical service.
An average salary for a specialist in the US is 230.000$ a year, a general practioner earns 161.000$ a year. An average salary for a nurse is 56.000$.
A candian specialist earns 161.000$ a year, a general practioner 107.000$ and a nurse 42.000$.
The average for a specialist in OECD 113.000$, for a general practioner 83.000$ and for a nurse 33.000$.
The salaries that the physicians and the nurses get are far to high, if the government can controll the medical service you can lower the salaries and make the services far cheaper for the consumers.
You have got to be joking. I really do wish you lived in our country to see how out of whack the compensation is of the avg. public employee. Typically our public employees make MORE than private employees of the same skill level. Anyone who understands basic economics should be able to see why.
Here its opposite. Its more attractive to work for a privately owned company.They usually pay more. A public employee will have a moderate/ok salary.
Average here for physcians in private business:138.000$ a year
---------------------physicians in public business:127.000$ a year
The problem for US is that the corporate taxes on business is the highest in the world, that is not good for business. You should lower the corporate taxes from 38% to about 20%, its a shame to have so high corporate taxes thats not good for business and it takes the money away from the business.
At the same time your taxes on personal income are to low. You must lower corporate taxes and increase taxes on personal income. A health care system covered by the government will also be good for business. At the same time you need more strong labour unions that can negotiate for collective wages.
A minimum wage about 18$/hour should be an absolute minimum.
That still doesn't take care of the problems. In theory you may be right, but as you may know we have a government that doesn't know how to not spend money. Any excuse to give them more is bad idea. The last one is more a problem of principle that I mentinoed before. If I, John Q Taxpayer, am going to be on the hook for your health care than it is only fair that I get a say in how you live your life so as to make sure you are not wasting my money needlessly. It's a choice between freedom and security. I get wanting a level of security, but it comes at the cost of freedom (and more freedom comes at the cost of less security). It comes at the cost of freedom in restricting what you can do in order to keep you safe and it comes at the cost of financial freedom. Money is the means by which people exercise their freedom. The less of it you have the less free you are. The more taxes are taken from you in the name of providing some benefit the less free you will be. Again I'm sure we agree on what we would like to see for an outcome, but government simply is not the answer.