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. The most visible consequence of socialized medicine in Canada is in the poor quality of services. Health care has become more and more impersonal.
Patients often feel they are on an assembly line.
Doctors and hospitals already have more patients than they can handle and no financial incentive to provide good service. Their customers are not the ones who write the checks anyway. This does not indicate that health services are delivered efficiently at low cost. It reflects the fact that prices and remunerations in this industry are arbitrarily fixed, that services are rationed, and that individuals are forbidden to spend their medical-care dollars as they wish. Supporters of public health insurance reply that for all its inefficiencies, their system at least is more just.