A common misconception regarding government health care is people imagine there are government employees similar to executives at Liberty Mutual or Mutual of Omaha or the Aetna Group or Humana or other insurance companies who evaluate whether a medical procedure is warranted and/or covered. (Most of us are aware of Wendell Potter and the Cigna health insurance company. "With almost 20 years inside the health insurance industry, Wendell Potter saw for-profit insurers hijack our health care system and put profits before patients. Now, he speaks with Bill Moyers about how those companies are standing in the way of health care reform."
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/07102009/watch2.html
Government medical does not operate that way. If a doctor decides you need a specific treatment and that treatment is covered then the procedure goes ahead.
Here are a couple of things to clarify that statement. Because government medical has to cover every individual it has to include the most procedures possible. In other words it encompasses more coverage than the vast majority of individual policies due to the fact it has to include every citizen and a large number of possible ailments.
The second point is if a procedure is covered, it's covered for everyone. Procedures are not decided on individual cases. The doctor and the patient decide on what procedure will be done. There are no "death panels" as there aren't any panels. As Mr. Potter makes clear in the video insurance company executives or "panels" decide on individual cases and the more cases they refuse the more money they make. There is no such process with government medical.
Policies and procedures notwithstanding in the end it comes down to reality, what do citizens living in countries with government medical think of their system. We know, as a fact, not one country has reverted to a "pay or suffer" system and we know every country started out with such a system. We know, as a fact, there are no credible movements in any country with government medical advocating the dismantling of their system.
Dozens of countries, as diversified as the world itself, show government medical to be superior relating to costs and citizen preference. There is no country, not one, that shows their prior "pay or suffer" system was superior to their government medical. That is the reality.
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