"And as Reason's Jesse Walker points out, even the most “progressive” healthcare proposals, right up to and including single payer (or even direct government delivery of service, along the lines of the British National Health), leave the basic institutional culture of healthcare entirely untouched. A single-payer system, far from being radical:

"would still accept the institutional premises of the present medical system. Consider the typical American health care transaction. On one side of the exchange you’ll have one of an artificially limited number of providers, many of them concentrated in those enormous, faceless institutions called hospitals. On the other side, making the purchase, is not a patient but one of those enormous, faceless institutions called insurers. The insurers, some of which are actual arms of the government and some of which merely owe their customers to the government’s tax incentives and shape their coverage to fit the government’s mandates, are expected to pay all or a share of even routine medical expenses. The result is higher costs, less competition, less transparency, and, in general, a system where the consumer gets about as much autonomy and respect as the stethoscope. Radical reform would restore power to the patient. Instead, the issue on the table is whether the behemoths we answer to will be purely public or public-private partnerships.” "

#KevinCarson #Healthcare

https://c4ss.org/content/2088