The Disadvantages of National Health Insurance Worldwide

There is an ongoing debate about the merits of various healthcare systems throughout the world. Some people point to the system of socialized medicine in Europe as a model that should be applied to the entire world. While it does provide a respectable level of care to a large number of people, it does come with a price.

Higher Taxes

• One of the biggest problems with national health insurance is dealing with the cost. Since healthcare is so expensive, the wealthy and the middle class will have to subsidize the cost for lower-income families. Those costs will be subsidized through the levy of higher taxes.

Massive Government Debt

• Even with higher taxes, the government will be forced to take on more debt to fund the standard of healthcare that people think they are entitled to. That higher debt will cause several possible outcomes. The first possible outcome is a further increase in taxes so the interest payments on the debt can be made and, hopefully, the principal can be reduced. The second possible outcome is higher inflation due to the government printing more money to pay off its obligations. In both scenarios, the true cost of healthcare will increase.

More Red Tape

• In addition to higher taxes and national debt, instituting a national health insurance system will increase the amount of red-tape individuals will have to deal with. The number of doctors a person can choose from might be reduced and the freedom to determine when you go, where you go and who you see could be curtailed in an effort to match geographic areas with certain healthcare providers. The paperwork and bureaucracy currently in existence is already a drag on the system and will likely get worse if a government entity is put in charge of its administration.

Reduced Service

• The loss of freedom of choice may lead to a lower standard of service in the healthcare industry since further restrictions on which doctors you can see might be imposed. Europe's and Canada's systems of healthcare are held up by proponents of socialized medicine as good models but they do not mention the wait times for non-emergency problems. Granted, if someone has a heart attack or is dealing with a life-threatening problem, they will get bumped to the front of the line. The problem is that even though a health issue might not be life-threatening, it can severely affect a person's standard of living until it is taken care of by a healthcare professional.

The Best Solution

• There are a lot of disadvantages to a national health insurance program. There are also a lot of disadvantages to every other proposed health system. The problem usually revolves around the program's cost and who is going to pay for it. With limited resources, only a certain amount of healthcare can be provided. The question is whether limited healthcare resources should be shared equally among everyone, even though not everyone has contributed equally to the system, or whether it should be allocated based on a largely free market system where the people who can afford it have access to it while the people who cannot afford it only have access to the most basic of care. There is not a simple answer or a simple solution. The only thing that people on every side of the debate can agree on is that the current system needs to change.