Nationalizing healthcare has many benefits. It will expand coverage to many of those who are currently uninsured. It will also reduce of the medical cost of each individual. The way it does this is simple : just cover everyone for any illness that shortens their life expectancy or impacts their functionality.

Proven Advantages

Free market fanatics may point out that if you give away something without charging for it, people will take advantage and abuse the system. Such behavior is only natural in the absence of limitations. Abusers will suck up all the resources which have been made free. This will result in poorer service and longer wait times for everyone else.

These fanatics fail to consider that healthcare is quite unique in its dynamics. Unlike commodity goods, healthcare is less susceptible to shortages due to spikes in demand when prices are cut. There are several guards. First of all, healthcare very individualized and cannot be resold. Secondly, additional healthcare does not make a person anymore healthier.

This is why healthcare can be socialized on a macroscopic scale, and can produce a more efficient system overall.

What matters most are the outcomes. When we look at resulting metrics like life expectancy, general health, and overall cost, we find that United States lags far behind that of socialized models in Europe. To point out a few holes:

  • Life expectancy in the United State is a few years shorter.
  • Millions more are not covered.
  • And our model is two to three times as expensive.

Unify to Leverage Scale

The Affordable Care Act added many patches and fixes. However, due to its legal mandates, it has produced a market that is more fragmented. A fragmented market has a difficulty leveraging scale to reduce costs. Its complicated and fragmented nature makes oversight difficult. It is harder to administer. It is more susceptible to gaps in coverage and more prone to abuses. All these factors produce a more costly and a less efficient system.

In order to work towards a more efficient system, we have to recognize that health care is very individualized. A treatment that works well on one patient, might not work on another. This nature makes healthcare very expensive on a patient-by-patient basis. It also offers insight as to why small regional and municipal markets are not as effective at reducing costs.

In order to produce savings of two to three times, we must get rid of market fragmentation at a grander scale. We must fit healthcare within a single, unified national model.

Better Access to Patient Records.

Due to the legal regulations, it is currently very difficult for doctors to access patient records. Perhaps it is even more difficult for patients to access their own health records. This makes treatment difficult and diagnostics redundant. For example, a doctor may justify ordering a new CT scan or a blood test, because he cannot access a patient’s records.

Under a national health care system, these records would be held by the government for the patient. Similar to Social Security, each patient has a number. They would be uniquely identified and protected with this number. This number will be used by the patient and medical service providers to access the patient’s health records. Medical service providers will be mandated to keep the patient’s health records up-to-date. And a card can be used to fill out prescriptions and access services.

This unified bookkeeping improves the efficiencies of doctors and hospitals. Doctors and hospitals will be spending less time figuring out where the patient stands in terms of health and coverage. They will be spending more time treating them instead.

Better Doctors with Better Oversight

Unified records also make it easier to reduce malpractice, fraud, and abuse. Records of treatments and prescriptions can be reviewed by a national board of physicians. Acting as like a judicial body, this board can investigate these records for abnormalities or discrepancies. Doctors can be ask for clarification on alleged violations. Offenders can be warned and repeat offenders suspended.

This review board also makes it easier to determine which doctors are more effective at treating patients. It can learn which treatments are working, and provide suggestions and options to doctors.

Reduce Drug Abuses

Prescription drug abuse is a growing problem in the United States. With a national health care system, not only do we make easier to catch doctors abusing their prescription rights, we also open another alternative, more humane route for managing drug addiction.

Caring for the Mentally Ill

A national health care system will also give lawmakers another route to address violence and mental illness. It will make it easier for those, who are mentally ill or those who are a threat to themselves and society to get treatment.

More Caring Government

Whether it be cost containment, patient record access, or improve quality of care, national health care gives the government and healthcare professionals a much-needed platform to work together to address the healthcare challenges of the 21st century. National health care opens new options to dealing with drug abuse and mental illness. Both of these can be addressed within a national health care model.

What I have covered here just scratches the surface of what is possible with a national health care system.

National health care will empower the government to take care of its citizens. It will create a more caring government, one that is more aligned and in-tune with health and social problems of its citizens. A nation is only as strong as its citizens. This is why national healthcare is worth every penny.