Universal health care affects economies differently than private health care.

Those in favor of socialized medicine contend that it reduces wastefulness in the delivery of health care by adding a middle man, the government, to regulate the supply of health care. For example, it might only take one government agent to do the job of two health insurance agents.

One of the biggest criticisms of socialized medicine is that it suffers from the same financial problems as any other government planned economy. Not only does it require governments to greatly increase taxes, it requires more and more money each year. Essentially, universal health care tries to do the economically impossible.

Government agencies are less efficient due to bureaucracy. Administrative duties, by doctors, are the result of medical centralization and over-regulation, and are not natural to the profession. In fact, before heavy regulation of the health care and insurance industries, doctor visits to the elderly, and free care, or low cost care to impoverished patients was common; governments regulated this form of charity out of existence. Universal health care plans will add more inefficiency to the medical system because of more bureaucratic oversight and more paperwork, which will lead to less doctor patient visits.

Profit motives, competition, and individual ingenuity lead to greater cost control and effectiveness.
Healthy people who take care of themselves have to pay for the burden of those who smoke, are obese, etc.
Empirical evidence on single payer insurance programs demonstrates that the cost exceeds the expectations of advocates.