"or do you want it in the hand of a civil servant who is responsible (ultimately) to you as a voting citizen?"
Politicians aren't any more connected to your medical situation simply because of a vote. The myriad of political and structural mechanisms between him and you are too much to expect the accountability desired.
Now, insurance companies it can be argued aren't really all that much better in that regard. This is true.
The problem is that in many ways we are over-insured. The third-party payer (whether public or private) skews and/or destroys the natural mechanism which brings down cost and increases availability to more people. Insurance for anything should be the weapon of last resort, saved for only truly high-end procedures. Instead we expect insurance to cover treatments for both the mundane and the exceptional, so essentially there is no longer a financial relationship between the person most directly responsible for delivering medical services (the doctor) and the person most responsible (otherwise) for payment, the patient. When those two are reduced to dealing only with one another, there is a much greater motivation to work with one another to come to a price that the doctor can live on and the patient can afford. It's this process, repeated countless numbers of times which allows any market to function as intended.
Re: No such things as a free organ transplant
Politicians aren't any more connected to your medical situation simply because of a vote. The myriad of political and structural mechanisms between him and you are too much to expect the accountability desired.
Now, insurance companies it can be argued aren't really all that much better in that regard. This is true.
The problem is that in many ways we are over-insured. The third-party payer (whether public or private) skews and/or destroys the natural mechanism which brings down cost and increases availability to more people. Insurance for anything should be the weapon of last resort, saved for only truly high-end procedures. Instead we expect insurance to cover treatments for both the mundane and the exceptional, so essentially there is no longer a financial relationship between the person most directly responsible for delivering medical services (the doctor) and the person most responsible (otherwise) for payment, the patient. When those two are reduced to dealing only with one another, there is a much greater motivation to work with one another to come to a price that the doctor can live on and the patient can afford. It's this process, repeated countless numbers of times which allows any market to function as intended.