Right I feel that a few things need cleared up here:
The big issue i have is I want to be a doctor who works with individual patients.
I'm assuming that you're talking about general practice here since that's the only way in which this as an idea makes any sense (if you're a specialist in a hospital then you're seeing whoever comes in for treatment in the area that you specialise in: no matter where you work. In the UK General Practice Doctors work with individual patients: people are registered to local medical practices that are owned generally by the Doctors that work there on a non-profit basis. The National Health Service provide funding to cover the wages of Doctors plus the costs of the treatments that they can do on-site (referrals to hospitals or prescriptions are covered by other sides of the Health Service); and that funding is contingent on them meeting certain conditions; the biggest one being that the care provided is free at the point of use and that they follow NHS practice. These are generally the exact same restrictions that GPs in countries that have an insurance-based system have to follow: only that its easier for everyone since rather than every insurance company having their own sets of rules and restrictions about what they will and will not cover, you only have one set of rules in NHS practices (private healthcare exists but its irrelevant to this discussion.)
I do not want the government running my work place, and effectively making me a government worker. If i wanted to do that i would'nt be busting my ass for pre-med and med school in the fall.
There are plenty of professionals who work for the government already: why is working for the State automatically less worthy than being in the private sector? Additionally Doctors in the UK are paid very good wages - my sister only qualified a few years ago and she's still a Junior Doctor and she's earning significantly above the average wage and in only a few years that will be a comfortable income probably in the six figure range. Also because they are government employees they have a high quality pension scheme that is guaranteed by the state (while private sector companies have recently been raiding the pensions of their employees: in many cases resulting in there simply not being enough money to cover the costs meaning that old people suddenly have their main income taken away from them); strong representation from their Trade Union plus significant support from the public for what they do. My sister has genuinely never thought about going private and she would bitterly oppose the imposition of a private system here even if she would financial benefit from it.
We already have a single payer type system here. The VA. The VA is an absolute disaster which shows exactly what government run healthcare does to people.
It shows the importance of properly investing in your health system rather than letting it wither and die in order to justify cuts to service levels or privatisation or both. The same issues that the VA has were exactly the same issues that the NHS had in the late 90s after eighteen years of Tory misrule; significant underfunding led to a service that was almost on its knees. Shockingly after the next government began funding it properly the quality of the service provided dramatically improved.
Our system right now int perfect but we dont have the ridiculous waits that people in other countries have, which is why we have a big medical tourism industry in America. I for instance have been diagnosed with skin cancer twice and i was able to get it treated on the spot with no wait. In other countries, who knows, it couldve eveolved into melanoma before the bureaucracy got around to it.
For procedures like that there generally is no waiting period if there is any risk that the condition may worsen - you would naturally skip the queue and be treated as an emergency in a case like that. Waiting lists that exist are generally for things like organ donations - which is pure supply and demand and could be corrected by an opt-out organ donation policy rather than an opt-in one - and procedures which are not emergencies and which require specialised help that cannot immediately be provided. Besides: someone in your condition who could not afford health insurance would have absolutely not chance at not developing melanoma while in the UK that is not a problem and from that perspective I think that it is clear that it is a significantly fairer system.
People from Canada, Asia, and Europe come here for procedures that they would otherwise need to wait in some cases several years for.
This is a heavily overblown story: the number of people that leave the UK for medical treatment for reasons of waiting lists are insignificant. More leave because of a wish to try experimental procedures but in the US many of those wouldn't be covered by insurance companies so there is no difference - again: private healthcare exists in the UK.
Additionally, if you put the government in charge of the medical system, they will be able to step in and make decisions for the doctors and the patients, not allowing them to make their own. See the recent story of the 10 month old baby in England whose parents raised over a million dollars to bring him to the United States for a potentially life saving expirimental treatment. The NHS stepped in and refused on the grounds that it would cause the child to suffer, and they are pulling life support either today or tomorrow. For the government to not allow parents to make one desperate attempt to come to the US and save their child's life is disgusting.
But this is the most egregious part of your post; since it is wrong in almost any way. Let me explain the case that you are talking about in detail.
Indeed; there have two cases like this in recent UK history; that of Charlie Gard about a year ago and Alfie Evans a month ago. I'm going to look at both cases in detail. The principal of both are the same: the idea is that the child has rights; that one of those rights is not to suffer un-due and unnecessary suffering if improvement to their condition is impossible and that those rights trump the rights of their parents. It is also the case that the Doctors involved in the care of the person are the ones that judge on whether or not they can apply for a request to remove life support (not "the NHS"; not some faceless government official: those who've been looking after the patient for a significant amount of time and who know more about them than anyone) and a Judge; looking at all of the evidence; has the right to make the best decision for the patient based on their interests - not those of their parents or the NHS; their interests.
Charlie Gard suffered from a rare genetic disorder called mitochondrial DNA depletion syndrome (MDDS); which causes brain damage and muscle failure; has no known cure and in the vast, vast majority of cases causes death in infancy. Dr Hirano (based in America) was researching a possible experimental procedure that might have been able to prove Charlie's condition. The doctors at Great Ormond Street Hospital were in contact with that Doctor while Charlie was on life support and said Doctor made the decision to not come to the UK to examine Charlie at that time although there was an agreement made between the hospital - an NHS hospital - and the Doctor to try the procedure out. In January he suffered a series of seizures that caused significant brain damage and the Doctors at GOSH made the decision that the experimental procedure - that it had been agreed would be carried out in London without Charlie needing to travel - could not save Charlie and they applied for an order to remove life support. This went through several months of legal wranglings and during that period Dr Hirano travelled to the UK to examine Charlie and came to the exact same conclusions as the Doctors at Great Ormond Street did: that the experimental procedure was fruitless and pointless to try after those seizures, and that the best thing for the interests of Charlie was for life support to be removed. The decision was made on the basis of the best interests for wee Charlie by the Doctors that cared for him for a significant period of time as well as an independent arbiter who is only concerned about the interests of the child and nothing else. Exactly the same processes exist in American hospitals as well: as I'm sure you are aware being a medical student there comes a point where keeping a person on life support without any prospects for improvement is only cruel for everyone involved and that was the case in this situation. Not an easy situation for anyone but I agree with the decision made by the courts in this case - if only Dr Hirano had made the decision to travel to the UK earlier then perhaps this might have been avoided but no one can truly know.
The case of Alfie Evans is very similar although a lot weirder (him being given Italian citizenship was... a bit odd). In that case there wasn't even a theoretical experimental cure: an Italian hospital offered to keep him on extended life support until some future date where theoretically something might be possible - since they hadn't diagnosed exactly what neurodegenerative disorder he had then there was no real prospect in a cure being found. However they said that because of Alfie's condition plus the fact that he'd suffered several very bad seizures that there was a significant risk involved in him being transferred to Italy and that the risks involved may have caused further brain damage and made transfer very, very risky. Additionally the doctors made the decision following a series of brain scans that demonstrated that the white matter in Alfie's brain was being progressively destroyed and that by their decision to apply for a court order very little remained; that the child was effectively brain dead. This one seems clearer cut and it is based on the same situation as above: the Doctors made the decision to apply for a removal of life support on the interests of Alfie; since there was absolutely no prospect: no hope of any improvement and that keeping him on life support was incredibly cruel.
I'm from a family with a lot of people who work in the health service: my sister is a Doctor; one of my cousins is a Nurse and her husband is a surgeon and I have heard all sorts of stories about their work. Once one of them had to make a decision on this . And you know what; its a lot fairer than the US system when critically ill people can be thrown out onto the streets by hospitals if they cannot afford to pay for their treatment. The NHS has problems - everyone knows this; and everyone accepts this. However; in the UK pretty much everyone - doesn't matter if you are a Socialist like me; a Liberal; a Conservative; or whatever - agrees with the basic principle of the system: that no one should be barred from receiving medical treatment because of their inability to pay; that care should be available to everyone in the country on an equal basis. A yougov poll in May last year found that
84% of people in the UK feel that healthcare should be run by the public sector - only behind the police (87%) and ahead of the armed forces (83%) and schools (81%). Anything that has that level of mass public support even when its many issues are well known must be doing a lot of things right - and that support only rises when the American healthcare system and the significantly deeper problems that it has comes to the attention of the public again.
e: One last thing: in your earlier post you talk about not being concerned about people who aren't a part of your life. That strikes me as being something that someone seeking to go into medicine probably shouldn't believe - after all; the whole point about being a doctor IS caring about people who aren't a part of your life in any meaningful sense. I actually find it rather frightening that someone seeking to enter medicine would have such beliefs: they strike me as being incompatible with the hippocratic oath.
