The original question was basically what is wrong with the idea of free health care?
The only things wrong that I can see is first the framing of the question. It is not free. The social systems used by various countries have economic infrastructures that have to support the health care system, through taxes, and, or state owned entities that are capable of generating lots if capital.
They tend to be led politically, and have a working bureaucracy.
They are subject to mismanagement, and corruption.
None of these reasons are valid reasons to say no to social medicine.
Individually there is little difference between the cost of insurance, and out of pocket cost, when compared to a tax. It already effects my income.
I am labeled a liberal and a leftist, but my life is so conservative that it puzzles me why anyone would label any politician a conservative? The only application that I can find is that they tend to be resistant to change.
So, in that regard moving from a quasi capitalist system to a full socialist system might be viewed as too large a change.
Mismanagement, and corruption exist in any system. At best we can only hope to control it. A social medical system would localize both mismanagement and corruption making them easier to deal with. It would also make dealing with them more cost effective.
Bureaucracies, tend to stabilize a system, and in my opinion theirs is the only resistance to change that we should have to deal with.
Effective social change is too difficult to accomplish politically. Politically the only thing resistant to change should be the laws that they enact. When they effect social change effort should be made to accomplish the goal, but all there is, is resistance.
We shouldn't still be fighting over is the health care plan right or wrong. It was voted on and said to be constitutional. We should be figuring out what problems it does not solve, which problems it causes, and fix them.
Not one corporation would have achieved the success they enjoy if every time they made a decision their competition were allowed to second guess their decisions, and interfere.
Personally, I would prefer a social medical care system, but this quasi capitalist system is what we have. I don't like having to constantly live conservatively, but it is my nature to do so. It is my not having a choice that bothers me.
And that is the answer to the original question. It is not that we wouldn't preferer free medicine it is that we don't have that choice. We have to choose from the choices we are given. It is not a matter of preference.
