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No. Governments should not pay for all medical care. Medical care is very expensive, complicated, and highly regulated. Governments should focus on the regulations of medical care, not provide it.

If governments paid for all medical care, the bureaucracy needed to make it work would be horrendous, expensive, bureaucratic, and time consuming. We should also not depend on the government to provide services. Governments generally have a habit of cultivating the mediocre.

Medical care needs would raise dramatically if government paid for all medical bills. Things like plastic surgery would somehow become medical procedures. Unnecessary plastic surgery. Medical professionals would be tempted to make even questionable procedures qualify as medically necessary.

People would also generally live longer. While that sounds like a real great ideal, it would increase the cost of medicine considerably. People would be able to afford to live longer. Older people tend to need more medical attention and tend to consume more pharmaceutical drugs. All these things would greatly increase the cost of medicine.

Governments may be tempted to approve cheaper drugs or decrease the number of years a pharmaceutical company could own a patent. While that may sound like a good thing, the testing regiments may be relaxed to meet such a short turn around. It is not a good idea to get the regulator too involved with the process. As it is, the relationship between the drug companies and the regulator is too cozy.

Then there is the question of organ donation. As it is people are in position to say if they want to donate or not. Some physicians are actively lobbying the public to donate their organs. If the government paid for all medical care, even greater and more stringent measures will have to be put in place, so that there is no temptation to start harvesting human organs from the deceased or the disadvantaged.

Governments cannot afford to pay for all medical care, nor should they.

Learn more about this author, Jobie Weetaluktuk.
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