If you provide health care for "free," people will use more of those services than if they have to pay for those services.
People will overuse any "free" public resource if they can. This is not due to any character defect on their part. It is human nature not to weigh the costs of your choices if the costs do not fall on you or anyone you know.
When health care is provided for free to everyone, or to anyone who cannot afford it, eventually the health care system gets overburdened with too may patients seeking "free" care, and medical workers have to find way to somehow control the flood of patients. Lacking a profit incentive or any of the discipline it provides, their solution is usually to make patients wait and treat them indifferently or at least with much less meticulous care than patients normally receive in a for-profit medical system.
Sometimes, the results are fatal, as they were for this woman who was ignored as she died on the floor in the psych ward at Kings County Hospital.
In fairness to the Kings County psych ward, it probably has more than the usual share of patients who seemingly lie down on the floor without explanation.
But the real problem here is not one that will ever be solved, no matter how many lawsuits are filed, and no matter how many hosptal employees and administrators are fired.
The problem is the system. Society needs a way to intelligently ration precious goods and services. Fortunately, we have just such a system. It's called the free market. A hospital that depends for its financial survival on the satisfaction of its patients generally does not treat them this way, unless of course the functioning of the free market is distorted by other government regulations such as laws that require hospitals to treat all patients who arrive in their emergency rooms, whether the patients can pay or not. Such laws, well-intentioned as they are, also ultimately result in a glut of patients too great for many hospitals to handle, with deleterious results such as the financial collapse and closing of many small hospitals. In addition, it often results in an inability of private hospitals to attend to many patients in their emergency rooms promptly, whether they are paying patients or not.
The heavy hand of government always comes with a price, whether the price is intended or not. Sometimes, the price is unacceptably high.
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