Dan has described the current healthcare system in Europe and Canada. Often, there are wait lists to get onto wait lists. Needless to say, people die on these lists. My uncle in Canada has been on a wait list for two years for non-elective surgery.

Originally the headliner act was also included in the festival admission. This meant that for extrememly popular headliners, people would have to queue, sometimes for days, in order to get into the ampitheatre. Due to the many problems this caused, they went to a separate ticket system.
They did however, retain a few sections of seats that were available with a festival admission.

Now there are basically three ways to get into the show. You can either take your chances in the festival queue, or you can buy a ticket in advance which guarantees a better seat that you can get by queueing, although you still have a shorter queue to buy the ticket. The third method is to buy a ticket from a broker, and pay a premium over the ticket price, effectively paying someone else to spend the time in queue for you.

In the case of a public/private heathcare system, you will get the same phenomena. The poor would have to queue for a limited supply of lower quality resources. The midle class would end up with longer lines than they currently experience, at a higher cost than they used to pay, for the same level of service. The rich, however would still be able to pay a premium to get immediate access to whatever services they decide they need.

Oh, and by the way, since they went to the separate ticket model, the quality of headlining acts has improved tremendously. Thus the people who get in on the festival seats get a better show than they would have under the old first-come, first-served model

This is an issue at state level now with programs like Medicaid. The government can charge each person less than they have to pay out, on average. Since not everyone qualifies for Medicaid, this is not as visible of an issue. (As a side note, I believe some state legislatures have passed laws requiring Medicaid programs to at least cover costs, but I don’t know specifically. The issue exists, though.)

But if health insurance is widely available from the government under such conditions, customers will be drawn away existing health insurance companies toward the government plans. Then we have the same issue as always with socialized medicine, in which there is overconsumption due to the fact that costs are understated.

The government will refuse to allow certain treatments that are deemed to costly. The goverment will also begin to fix prices that physicians can charge, leaving them with two options: refuse to accept government insurance, or lose money treating patients.

I can go on, but I think you see the picture. Government provided insurance is not free, and health care will be worse for everyone except for very few at the bottom.

Imagine if your local hospital, pharmacy, or and clinic were run and operated like your local DMV. Now, compare the vast difference in difficulty between issuing a driver’s license and the process to observe, test, diagnose, and treat health problems.