Because Most Voters Are Healthy

Canada's ObamaCare Precedent - WSJ.com

I answered the good doctors question at the end with my title.

Here is the problem with the Canadian system:

The problems were brought home when a relative had difficulty walking. He was in chronic pain. His doctor suggested a referral to a neurologist; an MRI would need to be done, then possibly a referral to another specialist. The wait would have stretched to roughly a year. If
surgery was needed, the wait would be months more. Not wanting to stay confined to his house, he had the surgery done in the U.S., at the Mayo Clinic, and paid for it himself.

When the writer was young and living in Canada, he was in favor of the system -- because he was healthy!! How good is your fire insurance? Would it be better if it was "free" government fire insurance?? Basically, you have no idea how good something is unless you use it. "Free fire insurance" would be a great example of a government program -- the VAST majority of people would never use it, so would be happy. The few that did may be happy or unhappy, but it would make no difference -- since the government provided it for "free", their would be no alternative, so it would be like a lot of other things that we just say "that's the way it is"

I personally know multiple people that I work with that have emigrated from Canada or England to get health care. They liked government health care when they were healthy and voted for it. Why not? It was fine until they ended up on the short end of health care rationing. Are there folks that get sick and are happy with it? Sure, some are at the front of the line -- even though the vast majority of lottery players lose, the fact that some win keeps a lot of gamblers in the game. Government health care can be thought of as a "line lottery" -- if you never get sick, you never have to worry, so it is GREAT! If you do get sick and are lucky enough to end up with a shorter wait -- again, GREAT! You win!

Like a lot of socialist policies though, the trouble with this is that EVERYONE except the very filthy rich is forced to play, but those that take jobs that pay more end up paying MUCH more to play, yet unlike gambling, they don't get any more chances to win. The "game" penalizes those that it needs the most to keep operating, so less and less people are incented to work at higher stress and higher difficulty jobs that pay more -- all that pay allows them to do is to finance the health care gambling game that they could play without any job at all!!!

The incentives are reversed -- minimal or no work is advantaged over difficult and long hours of work.