Everyone on the political left seems overly eager to adopt a system of universal healthcare. It’s a make-or-break talking point, and for an understandable reason -- healthcare costs in this country, especially when compared with other countries, are exceptionally high. Sick and injured people often choose not to treat their problems simply because they can’t afford to, and nobody wants this to be the case.

However, a universal healthcare system would come with massive problems, likely greater in scale and impact than the system we’re currently dealing with -- and importantly, nobody on the left seems willing to acknowledge them.

The Big Problems with Universal Healthcare

Let’s dig into some of the big problems that would come with a universal healthcare system:

1. Universal healthcare doesn’t automatically reduce the cost of healthcare. First and foremost, we need to acknowledge that simply making the government pay for healthcare won’t reduce the total cost of healthcare in this country. Our healthcare costs are inflated for several reasons, and those reasons aren’t simply going to go away by changing who pays the bills. The burden of payment is merely going to shift to taxpayers (which we’ll detail in a future section).
2. Americans are notoriously bad at proactive care. We also need to acknowledge that Americans are bad at taking care of themselves. We don’t take sleep seriously, and suffer the effects of sleep deprivation. We eat fast food, drink sugary beverages, and rarely exercise, so we end up overweight and subject to significant health risks like heart disease. We don’t even take doctors’ advice to heart half the time. If these trends continue, healthcare outcomes aren’t going to improve; a universal healthcare system isn’t going to magically change Americans’ attitudes toward their own health. If anything, these attitudes will become worse, since there will now be a magic safety net to take care of whatever health problems we develop.
3. Litigation will remain unabated. Medical malpractice litigation is ridiculously expensive in this country, necessitating that doctors spend hundreds of thousands of dollars per year, per insured, to protect themselves. Again, these costs aren’t going to go away with a universal healthcare system. At the very least, we’d need federal laws preventing or limiting the reach of malpractice litigation.
4. There’s already a doctor shortage, and it’s only going to grow. We’re already struggling with a doctor shortage in the United States, thanks to the diminishing returns of becoming a physician and the increasing needs of an older population. If we adopt a system that increases the burden of physicians while making the career less fiscally viable, that shortage is only going to grow.
5. Wait times will skyrocket. If everyone has practically unlimited options for healthcare, they’re going to abuse the system. People are going to visit hospitals and doctors’ offices constantly. Combined with the decreasing number of doctors and healthcare experts in this country, that’s going to make wait times skyrocket. Our resources are going to be stretched thin, and people are going to suffer for it.
6. We don’t have a model to follow. Canada and multiple countries in the European Union have functioning universal healthcare systems (or something similar) that have as many bad points as good. Most people on the political left point to these as proof-of-concept. But the United States is a very different country. This is a massive nation, with a very diverse population, and a healthcare system with tendrils in too many areas to easily manage as one coherent unit. If we’re going to devise a universal healthcare system, it’s going to need to be built from scratch.
7. Taxes are going to massively increase. The federal government’s current total revenue is projected to be about $3.643 trillion as of 2020, assuming current taxation rates. The current cost of healthcare in this country is roughly $3.2 trillion, meaning assuming costs remain the same, healthcare would take up nearly the entirety of the federal government’s budget. The government isn’t going to simply borrow this money, and it can’t print it without massive economic repercussions, so the only option is to increase taxes. By these estimates, taxes would need to double.

Toward a Better Healthcare Solution

There’s no such thing as a perfect system, but we need politicians who are willing to acknowledge the weaknesses and drawbacks of the systems they propose. We can entertain a debate about the merits of universal healthcare, but not when it’s constantly positioned as a perfect system, or the only system that’s going to work. If we can’t be honest about the realities of new legislation, we can’t have a productive dialogue, and ultimately, we’re going to get nowhere.