Yes, that is easy to see; however, that is not health treatment like we were describing, that is the pure evil of socialism which, if you are forced to live under, is almost impossible to avoid and stay healthy.
Well, aside from mischaracterizing what I said earlier about how socialized medicine is an incentive to be healthy (cause you know it won't likely make you well), and inverting that to something I didn't say, the classical strawman argument, let me explain why I think socialized medicine is a bad idea.
As for pure evil, when is the 'pure evil' pure enough? How much poop is permissible in the punchbowl?
A number of socialism's victims were carted off under the guise of receiving specialized medical care, or a 'better' education where specialists could help.
The National Socialist's eugenics programs started that way. "Camps" for the disabled or folks with special needs.
You see, "improving public health" could always be characterized as a statistical thing, and one way to make a population look better, statistically, is to eliminate any subsets which do not meet whatever standard is imposed.
One way to make a bureaucrat look better is better statistics.
For instance, shoot one in ten tobacco smokers, and smoking is down 10% (maybe more when the word gets out). The Ministry of Health can report that the anti-smoking campaign is wildly successful...If everyone who has a myocardial infarction is left to their own devices, the fraction of the population with heart disease drops, literally. Stop or limit the production of Insulin, and diabetes fades away.
Once any government controls who gets health care, it is only a matter of time before some one uses it to control people, to build their own version of what is acceptable as their 'superior humanity', 'Master Race', "healthy population', 'compliant populace'--whatever you want to call it, or to use as a lever to force obedience, by allowing or denying care.
The next best thing for a totalitarian in a 'free' population is to control who has access to that care, by controlling the finances involved. A few will slip through the cracks (they always do), and find a way to get health care, either through their own funds, barter of skills, or other devices, but most will be forced to march in lockstep or do without. Impoverish those who could, perhaps, afford their own by burdening them with mandatory expenses, not for care, but
merely the 'promise' of care, enforced by penalties, and few will be in a position, economically, to resist.
Merely cutting off food, or water, shooting them or gassing them wholesale isn't acceptable among free people.
Feed them crap and control what's in their water, food, and medicine, and then force them to pay exorbitant fees to be made well...now, that's a totalitarian's wet dream.
Control!, even without death camps and pockmarked walls, and it finances the 50+ room summer 'cottages' scattered in lovely exclusive places where other elites gather.
The relationship between a person and their doctor is a highly personal one, one which does not require the government bureaucracy as a middle man. There is no Constitutional Authority for the Federal Government to be involved in that relationship, except to provide for standardized measures (weight, volume, etc.) for the purpose of trade, and to coin the money used therein.
Then, there is the question of who decides: "What is healthy?"
Already we have seen "public cost" arguments against everything from riding a motorcycle without a helmet to smoking to firearm ownership. We've seen social acceptance go from Reefer Madness to, well, reefer madness, as drugs once worth a felony for possession of a couple of grams are being legalized and now tobacco is the "evil weed'. (Or apples, or eggs, or butter, or salt, or....)
For some a low sodium diet is a good thing. For others it produces fatigue and ill effects. Some can have high cholesterol with no apparent ill effects, others have serious problems. Why? Because we aren't all cookie-cutter critters, we have different traits. On the same diet, some will live to 100 and others will drop dead by 50. I think a lot depends on what your ancestors ate.
But where will that bandwagon stop? Government control is control. Control vital services, control those who need them.
