Some countries that have tried universal healthcare have been moving towards privatization as of recently. Even the countries that have implemented government healthcare most successfully offer it alongside the private option e.g. Switzerland, Denmark. Even then, the private options remain very popular in those countries. I don't think the problems with healthcare in America are inherent to the privatized nature of our healthcare. Many of the expenses in our healthcare system derive from red-tape regulations and masses of paperwork. This problem will likely be alleviated by AI programs in the future. They also come from a lack of competitiveness in the industry. We can make policies that force hospitals to be more transparent about their prices and we can promote competition in the insurance industry by promoting co-op health insurance plans as a competitor to the traditional insurance companies. Finally, I believe we make it too difficult for foreign medical workers to be able to practice medicine here. Increasing the supply of medical workers could also help decrease healthcare costs. None of these problems are likely to be solved by universal healthcare. Meanwhile, we would lose the healthcare system that is credited with a very large amount of modern medical breakthroughs. While our healthcare system is definitely flawed in many ways, I don't believe making it universal is the solution to those problems. If one wishes to argue for universal healthcare, they will have to explain how it would keep the benefits of private healthcare, how it would solve the problems with our current system, how it would avoid the pitfalls many other countries have run into in their implementations of universal healthcare, why healthcare should be free even despite the presence of scarcity in that market, and why it should break the current trend of increased practicability being brought about by decentralization rather than centralization.
