When my youngest son was born in California in 1978, the obstetrician was from Ontario and the nurse came from Saskatchewan. The only American-born in the delivery room was the baby. When prices are zero, demand exceeds supply, and queues form. Patients lie in temporary beds in emergency rooms, sometimes for days. At Sainte-Justine Hospital, a major Montreal pediatric hospital, children often wait many hours before they can see a doctor.
Heart surgeons report patients dying on their waiting lists.
But then, it's free. The busy executive, housewife, or laborer has more productive things to do besides waiting in a hospital queue. For these people, waiting time carries a much higher cost than it does to the unemployed single person. So, if public health insurance reduces the costs of health services for some of the poor, it increases the costs for many other people. It discriminates against the productive.