thegreatkillfile

Bottom line - socialized health care is less expensive for the same quality of care.

Please illuminate us on how artificially capping what an industry can charge for its product or service maintains the same quality level for all? FTA, Maine forced its medical providers to cap their rate of cost increase at 3%, yet the state's medical program is still losing money, meaning that they will likely press for more reductions in growth while demanding the same high level of treatment available to privately insured individuals who will pay more.

Eventually, if you force the medical providers to charge not what the market will bear for new and improved services but what the state says they can charge, health care quality will plummet. New and better services will not be seen as cost-effective by the primary caregivers, and the level of qualification of the primary caregiver will decrease as the best-qualified and educated people, in their own self-interest, will leave that field for one where they can make a better living. This only leaves people who do the minimum job needed to get by or the people who do it not for the money but because it's a "calling" for them. Witness the state of public education, where districts who supplement teacher salaries provided by the state with their own incentives tend to have higher educational acheivement in their students. Districts that don't supplement tend to have more of the teachers who are sort of marking time through the day and not attempting to do more than the minimum. The balance between good and bad teachers becomes disproportionate when the good teachers who are motivated to help children move on to districts that pay better, leaving the less-motivated teachers behind and turning out substandard students.