Used to be.....1930s to 1960s.... there were plenty of church-run charitable hospitals. In Salt Lake we had Primary Childrens, Holy Cross, St. Marks, and Jordan Valley. In most moderately substantial rural areas we had "community hospitals" which got guv grants for construction, equipment, etc. All these gave care without stint to those who couldn't pay, and received donated labor from physicians, plus tax-credited private donations. Lots of folks like my dad got little plaques on the hospital hallway walls for giving money.
Then, because of litigious culture and other economic factors, most of these were privatized and sucked into some corporate outfit.
A "Free Market" is essential to all human choices. You need alternatives to make a choice about.
I know the ideals of social justice loom large in some minds, but having a choice is essential for a human being to pursue happiness, one of those ideals our founders mentioned as worth fighting for.
Milton Friedman was a pretty good economist, one of the truly great. He reasoned that whatever we subsidize gets more expensive. More dollars chasing a limited provider pool's services. We give kids college grants/loans, and give colleges grants and funding of any kind, and they just keep building buildings, hiring more soft-shoe intellectuals who have questionable exspertise, and they peddle their tin-foil philosophies all day long, and the kids eat it up, and are stunted for life, believing they know stuff that isn't so. Tuitions rise, management perks and salaries rise, and nobody questions anything.... hence, no true education takes place.
Health care is no different. We need a system where people have a choice and don't have to participate in something that's not worthwhile, or that doesn't serve the need.
Despite all the regulations our health professionals have to deal with, there has until now been enough incentive for efficiency and improved care that we have a better system than anywhere on earth, Europe included.
control of your own body, in personal matters and including health and dental care, is a fundamental human right. No one else should be meddling with you on that turf. I've figured you for a dentist, green. You have a choice, go free and find a need, and address that need, and prosper for doing it..... or sit back and be part of the machinery that grinds out commonplace if not incompetent care. It might not be a simple either/or choice, I'm sure a lot of providers conscientiously follow the book and do the standard care in pretty good skill or high levels of actually caring.... but what moves the needle in technology is the effort to challenge current standards and equipment and do better.
That stuff about the uber-rich still applies under guv-run care for the lower humanoids. While we go to the corral to be castrated, they go to their high-rise docs for transhuman treatments/implants/stem cell injections/.... everything that no ordinary subject of guv healthcare could never hope for.
In terms you might be familiar with, we get our old teeth pulled and replaced with plastic dentures, they get the gold fillings.....well, whatever there is that can be done... . .
