Why Not Single Payer Healthcare?

Do you really want healthcare like single payer telephone?

Many people in the United States are old enough to remember that prior to the 1980s we had single payer phone service in the United States. Instead of purchasing your own telephone, you were required to rent a phone from the phone company. If you lived in an area where you were allowed to have more than one phone, the cost was often prohibitive to all but the wealthy.  Having a house with two phones was very rare and almost nobody had more than one phone number.  Calls were charged by time and zone called.  Talking to a friend down the street for 10 minutes could cost $5.00 for a "long distance" charge if they happened to live across the zone line. Businesses paid the equivalent of $400/month in today’s dollars so that they could call or be called by everyone in the city without the added "long distance" charge. Receiving a new telephone could take months and people had to stay home for a day or two waiting for a phone technician to arrive. Technological advances that improved the customer experience were stymied.

The best case scenario is that single payer healthcare in the United States would work much like single payer phone service. The worst case scenario is that single payer healthcare would work like current healthcare in systems like the Veteran’s Administration or the Indian Health Services.

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