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Universal health care is not a good solution to rising medical cost. The following are just a few reasons.
Universal health care systems have not been very efficient and effective. The welfare state of the UK is a very good example. The provision of the health care by the government has led to many problems. Wastage of resource occurs as cost is not taken in to considerations when the doctors are prescribing the treatment for the patients. Yes, it is true that this result in the patient receiving the best treatment. The downside of this measure however, is that the patients that need the treatment do not get or have to wait a long time to get the treatment while patients who don't need the treatment gets the treatment. There were insufficient doctors and nurses to cope with the rise of patients seeking free treatment. People were seeking treatment for non-urgent cases like dental treatment. So imagine you are about to die yet you have to queue up for a doctor when people in front of you are seeking only dental treatment.

Another reason why universal health care is not a good solution to rising medical cost is because they add a lot of burden on to government budget. In UK, the spending on health services increased from 7 billion in 1979 to 14.7 billion in 1983. It is a staggering increase of 2.1 times in just a matter of four years. It was estimated then that the NHS needs a budget increase of 1.5% per just to maintain the standards of healthcare. Although these figures were from more than ten years ago, they still show that the increase in government expenditure can be quite scary. All these money came from general taxes. The only way to pay this growing bill is to increase taxes. The problem is increasing taxes has its own repercussions. Firstly, it discourages the workers from working as a significant proportion of your salary is taken away by the government. Secondly, it forces companies to relocate their operations and employments overseas to avoid the heavy taxes. It also results in the lack of motivation to invest in the country as profits after tax are mediocre.
The third reason why universal health care is not a good solution to rising medical cost is because these systems do not have mechanisms to differentiate need from wants. Rich people, in general, do not need the provision of health care by the government as they could well afford the medical treatments. However, when universal health care is provided, these people will not be willing to pay for something they can get for free or subsidised. Hence, those people who don't need the universal health care gets it. Isn't that a waste of resource?
In conclusion, universal health care is not a good solution to rising medical cost due to the limitation of its mechanisms. There are better alternative such as making price of medical care transparent thus giving the consumers more power and eroding doctors' ability to price discriminate.

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