Oh, come on, it won't be better for everyone; it will be better for the working poor, for the stricken, for the chronically diseased, for the most unproductive people in society.
Productive people with health insurance won't get anything new or better except lines and delays for a rationed service.
If nationalization is such a good idea why not nationalize grocery stores, oil companies, pet food distribution, car companies, brothels, pick any industry you can think of. I'm afraid your argument for socialized and centralized control of the economy is just so much dog poop.
So you are arguing that the US system is fine if you don't plan on having any chronic condition, and you are wealthy enough?
And if you are a productive member of society, who happens to develop a chronic illness, what then?
It is a good system for the productive members of society if they don't use the system. Except for paying large premiums. And paying more tax to supply inadequate medical care for the vulnerable than I pay to supply adequate medical care for everyone, including myself.
Firstly the NHS is not the only alternative to the US system, it just happens to be one that I know most about, and it also has the distinction of costing lesss than medicaid. Other systems might be superior, but they do cost more than medicaid.
The productive people in society would find a slight reduction in the amount of tax that is spent on healthcare, and this money also entitles
them to healthcare. They could decide to cash in on the fact that they would now be able to access adequate universal healthcatre for themselves. This means that they could decide to reduce the insurance that they pay (maybe to zero) or they could raise the level of coverage that they get for the same money. They could decide that the state provides an adequate safety-net, and save the money, working on the principle that should they want private healthcare they will pay upfront for it, and that this will, on averagfe cost them less than if they were also having to pay insurance premiums, which also have to make a profit for the insurance company.
I suspect that you might indeed be getting a better deal with your pounds than I am with my dollars (that is, at this point - I would have argued otherwise a few decades ago) but I think it's too late to change the game here without a huge cascade of worse problems. And, as with the Ponzi scheme of Social Security, while one cannot escape the game, that doesn't mean I should help to make it worse.
And, yes, short sighted and foolish employers (particularly those involving unions) want to lower their costs by dumping medical costs onto the government - I would prefer to place it with the individual and let them make their own decisions. I am not smart enough to make everyone else's decisions for them; nor do I believe that any politicized bureaucracy can handle the job as well as the free market.
How much economic power does an individual have? How can disparate collections of individuals achieve the economies of scale that would be needed for a large general hospital? Because of this, large organisations are inevitable in healthcare, the only question is whether they are private, or state-run.
In the UK we do have the choice to go private, should we wish; it is just that we also have the choice to have healtchare that is free at the point of delivery.
ETA:
And from a purely selfish POV, I am getting an
infinitely better deal with my tax pounds than you are with your tax dollars, as far as healthcare is concerned. I get access to state-healthcare, whilst you don't.
Of course the vulnerable also get a better deal from my tax-pounds than they dop from your tax-dollars.
