Healthcare is the financial mess (and excess) it is today because of longstanding governmental involvement in controlling delivery, protecting franchises, dictating benefits, industry capture of regulators, limitations on innovation, etc.
In my opinion, our challenge in the years ahead - given massive unfunded liabilities for Medicare - and given the huge baby boomer cohort moving into retirement - is huge. We do need to move toward more market-based solutions at the state level where we can experiment, innovate and learn.
In making that transition in the direction of less govt and more market, we should not, in my view, just throw the poorest under the bus. We’ve made them dependent over decades, and just dropping their coverage when they are seriously ill seems wrong to me.
I have never seen a church willing to pick up major hospital costs; never. It is certainly not going to solve much of the problem even if a few churches were willing and able to do so ( and I love self dependence and private charity!)
Getting out of the Mega Welfare State without a collapse is not going to be easy, for sure... In the meantime, the financial system is stealing from the responsible saver class and dramatically subsidizing the speculator class through the Fed, the big banks, and easy money QE. Top that off with a corrupt executive, legislative and judicial government which has become a law unto itself, and it is hard to not be discouraged by it all.
“In the last days, men’s hearts will fail them... “ Yup!
“Healthcare is the financial mess (and excess) it is today because of longstanding governmental involvement in controlling delivery, protecting franchises, dictating benefits, industry capture of regulators, limitations on innovation, etc...”
I agree with you 100%. We need to get the government out of the healthcare business as much as possible, and get back to a market based, capitalist system.