Most ER visits are not life or death situations, and most would make a 20 minute drive over a 10 minute drive if it meant saving $1k. So the incentive is still

Most ER visits are not life or death situations, and most would make a 20 minute drive over a 10 minute drive if it meant saving $1k. So the incentive is still there. You can say that I'm valuing money over lives in this example, but I think we'd be picking the lesser of two evils, as it's becoming increasingly evident that socialized medicine is stacking up its own body count. Working with society is all about incentives, and universal healthcare doesn't incentivize excellence, it incentivizes complacency.