What will Happen to a Government Run Health System? Look at Rent Controls

A few decades ago, bureaucrats in large cities such as New York and San Francisco had bleeding hearts for it's citizens. The reason that the lower and middle class could not get "affordable housing", according to these politicians, was that the evil landlords were too greedy and were charging outrageous rents. How dare they make "excessive profits". So the politicians passed rent controls. Rent controls are price ceiling that put a limit on how high a landlord could charge for rent. These were put on apartment buildings that were in neighborhoods of the middle and lower classes.

Now the greedy landlords couldn't raise rents on their tenants, no matter how high inflation, cost of living, taxes and cost of repairs went up. So predictably, the first thing that happened was that repairs were not made by the landlords and the buildings went into disrepair. Next, since the landlords could not make a profit, or even pay expenses, many abandoned the buildings and walked away. The buildings turned into slums and many were vandalized and some burned down. The very people that were supposed to get affordable housing now had nowhere to live. Of course, no one built buildings that would qualify for rent controls, so no new rent controlled apartments became available. Landlords either turned apartment buildings into condominiums or built luxury apartments that were not subjected to rent controls. Of course the cities did build government owned "projects" which of course turned into slums and were riddled with drugs and crime.

This resulted in less housing for the people that the rent control programs were intended to help. The more affluent had more housing choices. This didn't help the poorer city residents because, of course they couldn't afford the luxury apartments. So even though there was housing available, the poor and middle class didn't have access, unless they waited long enough for the few remaining rent controlled apartments or a place in the projects opened up. The wait was usually years and sometimes people had to wait for people to die to get an apartment in the few remaining rent controlled buildings.

Fast forward to the Democratic health care Plan.

The rent controlled apartments and projects are the public option and government run healthcare, the landlords are the private practice physicians and the luxury apartments are their practices. Figure it out.

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