You're afraid health care will become too bureaucratic? Are you familiar with health insurance companies? There's already a bureaucrat between you and your doctor - the fact that he's from the private sector doesn't change that fact.
And private sector bureaucrats have an incentive to deny coverage, purge rolls, etc. - it means greater profits. In the last twenty years, health insurance companies have gone from spending 95 cents of every premium dollar on health care to roughly 80 cents today. Where did that extra money go? Greater overhead and profits. Under a universal system, public bureaucrats wouldn't have the same incentives to deny care.
Just a friendly reminder that before you start spouting cliches about "bureaucrats ruining things" you should ask whether they already have - just not from the government.
Yes, surely the incentives are different. I don't at all believe that the public-bureaucrat incentives are better.
My wife is manager of budget & reimbursement at a hospital, which means that her primary task is working with Medicare and Medicaid officials. I don't think that a day goes by that she's not telling me about some inefficiency in the process. It might be the (literally) reams of paperwork they're required to produce, or unnecessary tests that are necessitated by Medicare rules, or the attitude she gets from the public employees she must talk to. But any time you hear that Medicare is more efficient, remember that because Medicare/Medicaid nearly comprise a monopsony, it's able to push many of its administrative chores onto the healthcare providers.
And private sector bureaucrats have an incentive to deny coverage, purge rolls, etc. - it means greater profits. In the last twenty years, health insurance companies have gone from spending 95 cents of every premium dollar on health care to roughly 80 cents today. Where did that extra money go? Greater overhead and profits. Under a universal system, public bureaucrats wouldn't have the same incentives to deny care.
Just a friendly reminder that before you start spouting cliches about "bureaucrats ruining things" you should ask whether they already have - just not from the government.