Redditors who are against a universal healthcare system in the US, why?

1. These are one if those threads where you have to sort by controversial to get real answers
   — Pokanot


2. Edit: My first gold ever! Thank you kind stranger, but right now there are people affected by the hurricanes who need that money more than I need internet points. Here is a link to [Unicef's Puerto Rico page.](https://www.unicefusa.org/donate/just-28-can-help-family-puerto-rico/33002?utm_campaign=2017_misc&utm_medium=cpc&utm_source=0178/2/_Google&utm_content=PuertoRico&ms=cpc_dig_2017_misc_0178/2/_Google_PuertoRico&initialms=cpc_dig_2017_misc_0178/2/_Google_PuertoRico) I work in the health insurance industry. For the record I do support Single Payer, but I want to highlight a nuanced issue that has been lost in these dicussions and where I think a critical flaw still exists. Here is a simple thought experiment: **How is health insurance different from auto insurance?** You don't envoke your car insurance every time you change your oil, get gas, or get a timing belt changed. Why? **Because you buy insurance to cover catastrophic failures, not basic maintenance**. Because of this, you often shop around when looking for a service and mechanics have their prices printed on the walls. You can easily learn how much a given service will cost from mechanic to mechanic. **Health Insurance is no longer insurance, it has become synonymous with health care**. You can't walk into a dentist and check the price of a filling on the wall, you need to talk to the doctor directly and ask about what kind of insurance they accept. This is by no means the doctor's fault, the health insurance companies did everything they could to ingrain themselves in the process. But because of their influence, you have no idea what you are going to pay for any given service and you are locked into using certain doctors. Now, I understand the argument that people don't "shop" for a surgeon while having a heart attack, but I think that argument also hints at another issue: the dual nature of a medical professional in America. **Is a doctor a public servant or a business owner?** Right now it's both, but skewed towards a buisness. As a child I always lumped doctors, firefighters, and the police into the same mental bucket. These are people who are here for "the greater good"; they help you when you need it. I would hope a doctor would save my life for free if I suddenly collapsed in front of him. I would not expect the same from a mechanic or IT tech. Why? Because there is a moral responsibility one takes on when they become a doctor (a Hippocratic oath one might say?). Again, maybe that is just a naive part of my childhood, but I still carry a part of that belief today. My heart surgeon is not going to try to swindle me, they are going to try to save me. A doctor shouldn't have to worry about price matching and running tv ads. They shouldn't have to bargain with an insurance company for every little thing, or risk losing that pool of patients. The reason doctors have to overcharge on everything these days is specifically because of the way health insurance has ingrained itself. They have to charge $3000 knowing they are going to get $300. So, do I support Single Payer? Sure, it's better then what we have now. But I don't think it's a silver bullet. The entire health insurance industry is currently too involved with doctors and replacing your insurance with government insurance is only half the issue. Until we can separate *insurance* from *health care*, things are still going to be overly complicated and expensive. Should all doctors become government employees like police and firemen? I don't know, that would create a whole new can of worms. If doctors operate as private businesses, then we need a standard pricing structure that doesn't involve insurance (not many insuance companies cover LASIK, and look how easy it is to shop around for the right surgeon). If we don't want to bar the poor from preventive and emergency care, then we would want health care to be a simple human right, and at that point doctors are basically government employees. I suspect we're heading for a blend of the two, but America will be slow to accept the idea of giving out care as a right. I just want to dispell the "greedy doctor" narrative that floats around sometimes. If a doctor acts like a used car salesmen and charges ridiculous prices, it's because the healtg insurance industry has forced them to. Health insurance needs to be more like auto insurance for Single Payer to really work.
   — buggy65