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Americans think they have more freedom of choice simply because a private company runs their health insurance. This is absolutely not true.
In single payer systems that other countries use, you can pick any doctor that you want to go to. It doesn’t matter where you live. It doesn’t matter if you just moved. You can pick any doctor you want.
In the US system, you can only pick the doctors in your network. And, since insurance companies and providers “compete” with each other they don’t help each other out. That means you might get coverage in one hospital, but not another.
Now, that works great if all the doctors you need are in your network. However, you soon find that some of the best doctors are eliminated from your network. Now, you have the choice to pay a huge sum to go out of network or to stay in network with worse care. This system provides less freedom of choice of doctor.
The high deductibles and high copays keep patients from going to the doctor. Who feels more free, the patient that can go for free or patients that have to stress about the cost? Of course, lower cost induces more freedom to feel like you can afford to go to the doctor. In the Unted States, people don’t go to the doctor frequently and that’s why they have low ranking in health care due to the treatable diseases that are ignored.
The United States is the only country that bankrupts millions of people over health care. Nearly every country feels it is morally wrong to ruin someone’s financial life over health care. A lot of countries have maximum monthly out of pocket expenses that are quite low or simply nothing at all is charged.
Doctors in the US graduate with enormous debts to pay back. Most students ow around 100k dollars or more in debt. The only way to pay it back is with a great job that pays a lot.
Other countries pay for a doctors education. They graduate with no debt at all.
Ironically, our Federal government pays for nearly all residencies through the Medicare program. Interns are paid really low salaries (around $13.00 per hour) and the federal government pays the hospitals over 100k per year per resident.
US patients have less choice in which doctor they can choose. They have more stress and worry about going to the doctor due to high medical costs. In addition, you always have to worry about insurance deciding they don’t want to pay and to put you in financial straights. America does not give a more free system just because profiteers run it.