Should the U.S. Adopt a Single-Payer Health Care Program?

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All health care systems limit care based on the availability of funds to pay for that care. Since the United States already pays far more per capita than any other nation for health care, we should have the least amount of rationing. But we don’t. We have the most rationing of all industrialized nations merely because of our unique method of financing health care. We ration based on the ability to pay. Other nations establish systems that essentially eliminate financial barriers to care. No country turns away individuals with a medical crisis that is an imminent life-threatening emergency, but we are the only nation that turns away individuals with significant, non-emergent medical disorders that impair quality of life and may even hasten death.

Opponents of reform frequently cite the queues (waiting periods) for specialized services that plague some other nations as a reason that we should reject a national health program. It is important to recognize that not all nations have significant queues. Often excessive queues can be eliminated by simple queue management techniques – a process of identifying the cause of the delays and instituting corrections. Sometimes an adjustment in capacity is required. The cost of these adjustments is quite small when compared to the overall costs of the health care system. With the amount that we are already spending on health care, we have more than enough funds for the stewards of our health care system to monitor flow and apply queue management or capacity adjustment as required.