MedicineBow:
You will see the quality of Doctors in the US plummet if medicine is taken over by the government.
Government fixes prices.
Would you go to medical school for 12 years in order to be dictated the fees you can charge? To decide which patients to see, and which to reject? To decide that you don't want to accept $4.24 to apply a band-aid, because you feel it's worth $7.79?
Now, doctors have the option to decline to accept medicare as an insurance. Patients that want to visit a particular doctor, with an insurance plan he doesn't accept, must pay cash.
You put the government in there, and one of the first things they'll do is mandate that you can't deny medicare patients. Next, all the BCBS/Humana/Cigna and other plans immediately slash their reimbursement rates to match Medicare.
Doctors incomes end up:
1. Suffering because they now treat more Medicare patients than they used to, which historically has always paid consistently less than "real" insurance... those treatment hours could have been spent on a cash basis or on patients with better insurance.
2. Suffering because the other insurance carriers have exploited the situation and slashed their own compensatory rates.
Whereas a doctor now makes around $250K on a private practice, he would immediately have his income slashed down around $150-$175K, after perusing the compensation differences between various CPT codes of Medicare versus BCBS.
For someone who spends nearly $250K in education investment and constant improvement of education, that's not enough money.
And, there is no way to increase that pay based on performance or reputation.
You're endorsing making a Doctor into a slave, essentially. While it may initially be a well-paid slave, there is no self control over income, and you will see a day maybe 50 years from now where Doctors and Teachers are each making the equivalent of about $40K nowadays, stuck as social servants.