# Pros and cons to universal health care

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pros-and-cons-to-universal-health-care/634194>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [September 9, 2012, 2:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pros-and-cons-to-universal-health-care/634194 "2012-09-09T14:05:39Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 40

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**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\
**Post date:** [September 10, 2012, 7:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pros-and-cons-to-universal-health-care/634194/40 "2012-09-10T07:03:49Z")

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> [@clairobscur](#):
>
> You know, I’m as much pro-public healthcare as you can get (like 99.9% of people living in a country with such a system) and I mentioned many times that I held the system used in my country in high esteem.
> 
> However, I’m not sold on the idea that a reform of the US system will result in lower costs. Basically, there are a lot of issues that won’t be solved by just reforming the system. For instance :
> 
> -As long as insurance is delivered by private for profit insurers, this profit won’t go away.
> 
> -As long as, in the name of free market, there’s no will to negotiate with the pharmaceutical industry (to cover, amongst other useless things, adds for the general public, whose job is certainly not to figure out what drug they need by watching TV) drug costs won’t go down.
> 
> [- other reasons …]  
> … European systems [did not need] to deal with an existing, dinosaur-sized, health care system with a lot of big players who have a vested interest in _not_ reforming it.
> 
> Good luck.

I’m afraid you’re right, **clairobscur**. To your list of reasons why U.S. healthcare is expensive you can add GOP malice. Before voting against anything like Obamacare, they pretend they might support it long enough to pack it with poison pills. Win-win for them: they increase the profits of pharmaceutical and insurance companies, while ensuring that taxes or debt increase under “socialized medicine” and Americans will thus hate government even more than before.

> [@clairobscur](#):
>
> And if for some weird reason you ended up with a dispute in an UHC system, who do you think is more likely to make a big issue out of it : a bureaucrat or an insurer who has a vested interest in not paying you? Easy pick for me, but I guess your milleage can vary.

You must not be from around here. 😃 Employees of private companies are hard-working people, doing things best way possible because of Free Market Principles, and proudly pro-American enough to send your children off to fight foreign wars. Government bureaucrats are lazy sniveling dolts, probably from some inferior ethnic group, who want to make your life as unhappy as their own.

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