I strongly support the Warren/Sanders universal healthcare plan, but in terms of optics, I don't actually see what the point is to making “duplicate coverage” private insurance illegal. It invites FUD and provides a convenient bogeyman while being entirely irrelevant in practical terms. If the government is providing comprehensive free healthcare to all, why would anyone need duplicate private health insurance? There's no reason to make it illegal, because there's no reason anyone would continue to pay for it. It will shrivel up and die on its own.
The reason is so that there aren't "boutique" private practices. Keeping the rich people in the same boat as the poor people is actually quite important for the long-term health and welfare of the system. Members of the Canadian parliament have the same healthcare system as anyone else. Thus they aren't terribly tempted to cut it.
If private insurance was allowed (in Canada), the elite would have expensive plans that had physicians only caring for a few people each, and so on. This worsens the care in the general system but more importantly, it splits the interests of the elite from the general public.
So how do you justify to your family that you are voting for someone who will reduce availability of very specialized treatment for them (those boutique doctors), so some random people you've never heard of can have better care "on average"?
From a selfish perspective, because you run into those random people. When your servers and your retail employees can go to the doctor instead of "waiting it out" because of medical expenses, that's less likely to make you and your family ill.
From a less selfish perspective, there but for the grace of God go you.
Specialized care is not synonymous with boutique care. We have a robust research and development economy in the US that will continue to exist without the perverse incentives of private insurance.
And people all over the world go to South Korea for plastic surgery. We don’t stop being the best because we now pay for the care for every American at the point of need.
Specialized illnesses don’t discriminate by class. Those without means don’t receive the care they need. We are fighting so that the system centers that care instead of revolving around a third party private payer that has every incentive to deny that care.
Having boutique practices is what reduces the availability of very specialized treatment, not the reverse. You're stuck because your understanding is completely backwards.
Just FYI, Warren is backpedaling heavily on Medicare for All. She released her “healthcare plan” the other day and it its full of obvious outs and hedges away from M4A. Sanders is the only candidate still really fighting this fight.
M4A just won't work when half the country is completely against it. A public option as a stepping stone is much more feasible. We also need to stop limiting the number of doctors and nurses artificially.
