What is Single-Payer Health Care?

The answer to that first question is simple and it is two-fold. First, there are those who are committed to unrestrained free-market health care coverage. Some of these are committed because they profit by it, others because they have been deceived into thinking such "private coverage" is always better than something they call "socialized medicine." Second, there are those who genuinely believe that the competition in free-market health care provides us with better quality care and more choices.

That these beliefs are false is rather easy to prove. The United States ranks 37 in health care according to The World Health Organization, has 47 million uninsured, and even more under insured. Furthermore, the United States is filled with horror stories about those who are fully insured but still find their necessarily medical procedures and prescriptions uncovered by their insurance. Finally, health care costs, even among the fully insured, is THE LEADING CAUSE OF BANKRUPTCY in the United States.

It does not take much depth to recognize that our free-market system is a failure. Most other developed countries use what is called a single-payer system. Pejoratively called "socialized medicine," by its critics, single-payer health care systems are more accurately described as "socialized insurance." Such systems do NOT have the government run and/or deliver health care. Hospitals are still private, doctors still have private practices. What is done by the government is "paying the bill." Instead of your health insurance companies paying (or more likely attempting not to pay) your health care costs, your costs are payed for by the government, with money from taxes.

Why is such a system "unacceptable" in the United States? There is no good reason. Private companies only seek profit; that is the nature of private enterprise. Government funded systems, on the other hand, are answerable to the people. We can vote lousy politicians and lawmakers out of office ... but what can we do with the CEOs of big health insurance companies?! Is there anything preventing a genuine consideration of Single-Payer health insurance besides the fact that politicians get a lot of money from big health insurance companies? Is it really a desire for "freedom" that supports free-market health care?!