[FooSH]

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But the number of patients remain constant, any doctors taken away from the public service will also take patients with them.

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False. Demand in public sector will ALWAYS be sky high since the model is "charge everyone in advance, tell them they are allowed to recoup as much as possible by consuming services". In private health care, the feedback of consumption to fees and/or insurance rates naturally limits demand with cost. Even if you have a parallel private system, participants in the public system are still incentived to get whatever they can out of it.

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Are you saying people make up medical conditions? I know hypochondria exists, but I've worked in both the public and private sectors (in the UK), and they both seem to have their equal share of timewasters. If anything, private is worse as they feel they should have special attention and are often sent for unnessecary tests simply because they have paid for them.

On the other hand, small complaints can often turn into big, hard to treat ones. When patent know they can see a doctor with no up-front cost, things can be caught earlier saving money on expensive treatments later not to mention the lives that are saved.

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I know nothing of the CMA and its limits, but there are a lot of qualified doctors coming from developing nations. Even public sector pay will look like a goldmine to them.

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Actually, the CMA dramatically limits the portability of qualifications from other countries. The fact that you think they're qualified isnt' good enough for the CMA.

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So there are no overseas doctors at all?

I think we can both agree that totally socalised healthcare (no private at all) sucks, I still can't see any reason why a 2 tier system is not superior in every way.