If comparing health care systems worldwide, I think the best way to see how they measure up is to see where people with a choice actually go for health care; people DO "vote with their feet" on things like this.
I personally think that, imperfect as it is and despite Obama's immoral meddling and conniving to take us down a few pegs, it's still the USA with the best system . . . but once we see full implementation of Obamacare, your guess will be as good as mine.
True.
If the capitalist method of medicine is fully extinguished in the US, we'll lose that status.
Once it is illegal to decline to accept particular forms of payment (government insurance in particular but any particular insurance in general), US healthcare dominance is done for.
That's one of the things that irks me most about the critics perspective on the AnCap model.
Take any bleeding edge medical treatment. Let's say someone has a medical procedure that cures all forms of cancer, permanently. That person has invested time and capital to bring that treatment to market. Now that the treatment exists, some sort of decision has to be made on how to implement it.
That single person can choose to implement all treatments himself, monopolize his tech and be able to treat perhaps 2 people a day, 5 days a week... about 500 people a year. And charge those 500 people $100k each.
He's got a monopoly on the market, he can charge what he wants.
Or, he can go into the education market and teach others how to implement his treatment. Charge each provider $100k to learn how to do it. He can teach 10 providers in a classroom setting per week, and make the same amount as monopolizing his treatment, and ultimately treat more people by exponential provider availability. Except, the value of the treatment diminishes with the number of providers capable of rendering service.
But, whether 1 provider charges $100k per treatment, or 100 providers charge $10k per treatment, no matter what this is true: most insurance plans won't cover the treatment. Whether it's government or private insurance. Won't cover it.
So the first recipients of bleeding edge medicine need to have something in common with the first customers of private space flight: Money.
And this makes sense.
Those researchers and doctors inventing new treatments, are not inventing them in a vacuum. They use new microscope technologies, new computer technologies, new analytical philosophies, new dna or chemical splicing technologies, new transportation technologies to make new resources available to them, and a host of other advancements provided by the various Hank Reardens of this world.
A new treatment is just like Rearden metal: untested, but claimed to be an improvement on the status quo (i.e. a lack of treatment).
Consumers of new treatments need to have something in common: An intelligent mind capable of analysis of a treatment in terms of risk and benefit. And funds to reward the development of that new treatment if they choose to utilize it.
The pizza delivery guy doesn't have either of these things.
The successful entrepreneur, does.
So the entrepreneur gets to be the guinea pig for the new treatment, at great cost to his financial success thus far. He bears the risks necessary to BUILD THE ODDS that justify the coverage of the treatment by various insurance plans, once sufficient treatments are implemented to define those odds.
De-railing the AnCap model of health care entirely will subject the poor to more questionable medical procedures that are not fully mastered by the practitioners of those treatments.
