re: #369 MandyManners

A fine for not signing up. Higher prices at your own doctor?

Higher medical prices are a given. One thing the free market is particularly good at is precisely matching supply to demand - at the moment, there are just enough doctors and support staff to meet the demand that presently exist. Add 10% to 15% more patients (or a great deal more, if you believe some of the figures for those currently uncovered) and there simply won’t be enough resources to meet the increase. And what happens when demand for a finite resource soars? Prices go up, because the service now has increased value thanks to it’s scarcity.

And it takes years to widen the supply pipeline - nearly a decade in the case of doctors, more for specialists, somewhat less for various technicians, but for at least the next several years there will not be enough medical resources in the form of personnel to meet the newly created demand.