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I just can't understand how anyone would think an insurance company, that has as its sole motivation the making of a profit(disregarding those very very few and far between not-for-profit organisations), would be the best choice for providing health care services. What else are they going to do but charge as much as they can for premiums and find any way they can to deny service should a claim arise?
Regardless of how badly managed a government run system may appear to be, surely the mere fact that such a system is run primarily to ensure that all people have adequate medical care, rather than to provide as large a profit for shareholders, would be a better choice? At least when it comes to ensuring all people have basic healthcare provided? Then if one wants to move to the head of the waiting list for a procedure or choose their preferred doctor, choose their hospital or whatever then they can opt into private health insurance to get those benefits.
I guess it depends on priorities though. If one's society values profits over the provision of health care for all, then the insurance industry would be the logical choice for providing health care.
Unfortunately throughout the recent 11 years of Liberal(right wing conservative party) rule in Australia our government did it's level best to destroy the public health service and force everyone into private health insurance. Now that the damage has been done the Labour(left wing party) government in power seems to be happy to sit back and claim they can't do anything to fix it because of what the Liberals did previously. I see a time in the not too distant future where Australia will be much the same as the USA with the insurance industry deciding whether or not a profit can be made on the medical treatment a citizen needs and deciding whether or not to provide said treatment based on that analysis.
Sad but true.
PKFFW
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