ABSTRACT
In the US private insurance market, patients purchase coverage; different people end up with different insurers, and there are multiple payers throughout the healthcare system. US government entities spend more per capita on healthcare than all but two other countries in the world. The two advanced economies with the most economically free healthcare systems—Switzerland and Singapore—have achieved universal health insurance while spending a fraction of what the US spends. Regardless of any cost-benefit comparisons of universal healthcare coverage plans in developed countries, the writers are playing down the most critical issue: Every other developed country offers some coverage for all of its citizens. Opponents warn that a single-payer model could lead to a wholesale bureaucratization of the healthcare system by the federal government, or even to socialized medicine. Medicaid in 1965, under President Lyndon Johnson, came as a drastic expansion of the safety net established by Social Security in 1940.
