[Borodog]

The problems with the US healthcare system are caused by too much socialism, not too little. We've *had* socialized medicine for more than 40 years, ever since medicaid and medicare socialized healthcare for the poor and elderly, who conse the bulk of healthcare services. The most powerful union in the nation is the AMA, whch greatly restricts the supply of doctors, damatically increasing costs. Health insurance has literally thousands of mandates that prevent competition from operating, skyrocketting the costs there. Goveremt mandates treatment be given at capped prices which offsets costs onto those paying out of pocket or with private insurance, again increasing both medical and insurance costs. As insurance premiums skyrocket due to governent interventions, more and more people choose not to buy private insurance, increasing the premiums for the remaining suckers and increasing the pressure to socialize the insurance industry. Mandated treatments with taxpayers picking up the bill cause a tremendous increase in demand, restrction in supply, shortages to patients who most need care because it is misallocated to those that don't and cause further skyrocketting costs to taxpayers. The price caps cause medical providers to avoid shifting resources to the capped services, distoring the structure of the industry further.

In every industry that is not heavily regulated or outright nationalized or socialized, like consumer electronics, prices fall over time as increasing productivity reduces the costs of production. This is masked by monetary inflation, but is still obvious for say computers. But all industries that are heavily regulated, intervened in or outright socialized or nationalized see costs skyrocket, such as health insurance, health care, public education, roads, police, courts, you name it. Quality and service suck, costs are sky high.

The US spends more on healthcare because wears fatter than the rest of the world. We also are more wealthy, can meet basic needs like food shelter energy and transport with a smaller fraction of our income leaving more to spend on healthcare. The "worse health outcomes" is similarly a crock; we're fatter and that has a lot of negative health impacts, thus the higher spending.

And before someone brings it up if they haven't already, the claim that government run health systems are more efficient than the private sector is also a crock. Medicaid and Medicare simply foist off the cost of administration and compliance onto the provders, shifting those costs off the goverment books and onto the backs of consumers. Furthermore the cost of pure regulatory compliance is gigantic, further distorting the cost of private health care provision.

There is one area of human medicine where the amount of government intervention is at a minimum: plastic surgery. Fake [censored] and new noses are not covered by Medicaid and Medicare yet, and hence the price of plastic surgery is plunging.

Also, I think it I'd terrible that I can get faster and cheaper health care for my dog than for my wife, but it is unsurprising, since destroying the veterinary care industry has not been a high priority for politicians for four decades.