This political season, in the run up to the election which happens roughly a year from now, several Democrat nominee-wannabes are advocating what they call Medicare-for-All. What they mean is single payer health insurance. All private insurance goes away and the government pays for the health care you get.
I started to write "the government pays for everything" and stopped. The history of such plans in places like the U.K. and Canada is that a government simply cannot afford to pay for all the health care people want.
The result is a form of rationing, to make the available dollars cover the expressed need. Triage becomes the name of the government health care game.
Immediately life-threatening conditions are treated immediately, unless you are very old or very sick and likely to die soon regardless. Conditions which threaten your life in the medium run are treated within a few months, again if you aren't too old, too fat, or a smoker.
Conditions which merely give you a lot of pain, but are not life-threatening, get treated in a much more leisurely fashion. A hip or knee replacement may wait 1-3 years. If you're old, obese or a smoker it won't be done at all.
If your prognosis is unfavorable, if you don't have good odds of recovery (many cancers), you may receive palliative care while you linger and die. If you are old, ditto.
The demand for some tests like the MRI or CAT scan tend to exceed capacity, so you may be treated based on your physician's best judgment without benefit of MRI, as the wait time for the test is too long.
If you are homeless, uninsured, or getting by on Medicaid, the above may be an improvement over your present situation. If you are reading this, government health care almost certainly will be less satisfactory than your present coverage.
It is no accident Canadians who can afford it come to the U.S. for surgical procedures they'd have to wait years for back home. Yet they love going to the clinic 'for free' if they have a cold or a skinned knee.
