If you follow politics at all these days or hear any conversations about healthcare in the United States, you may have heard about the infamous “single payer system.” Apparently our system of charging multiple entities like Medicare, Welfare, and a plethora of insurance companies is too laborious and isn’t working (I agree), so we apparently need to institute a single payer system to correct our current course.

Hold on.  Let’s just think about this for a moment. Is there any other profession in the United States that uses a single payer system? Who would that single payer be? How would they determine what to pay? What if we didn’t agree with that decision?

“Single payer system” means the government. And in healthcare, that means Medicare. How’s that system working right now? Ask almost any physician and they will tell you that Medicare is the problem, certainly not the solution. Or look at another government system for healthcare, the Veterans Administration. Have you heard about them in the news lately? Cancelled appointments for critical procedures, poor  care, no physicians, veterans left to die on bottomless waiting lists.

I like choice when I go shopping to fill my car up with gasoline. I get to choose between Costco, Safeway, Ernie’s Fill and Go–you get the picture. And if the price is too high or the service too poor, I go somewhere else! I don’t want my healthcare determined or managed by the federal government. It isn’t working as well as you have been led to believe in other countries and it won’t work here.

Check out Direct Primary Care, a growing trend in medicine where physicians are eliminating both the government and insurance companies. The quality of care has gone up and the prices have gone down. Funny how capitalism works.