I actually agree with the left on this one. The central problem is that insurance works by pooling people of comparable risk. In free markets insurance providers will skim the young and healthy and put them into low-cost risk pools. What do you do for the old and the sick? They are put into high-cost risk pools and basically pay their own way. But few people can actually afford to do that. We would end out like the Eskimos, who put the elderly on ice floes when they got too old.
Our current solution is that we do risk pooling by job. That is a fairly random assembly. People that are too old to work go into Medicare. But I think everyone will agree that the current system - an ad-hoc mixture of free markets and government intervention - is not good. So the only market based solution I can see is to pass two laws. First, make it illegal not to have health insurance. This will force everyone to buy health insurance (the healthy often opt out). Second, force all insurance companies to accept everyone no matter how sick, and to force everyone to pay the same rate for coverage.
This will not get rid of medicaid because poor people cannot afford health insurance. So even the minimal government solution is suspiciously like universal health care via vouchers.
“I actually agree with the left on this one. “
What have you been smoking? What has the gov’t ever done that was efficient?
Have you seen Hillary’s 1993 version of Universal HC? That’s what their vision is. It had fines for any doctor treating someone outside his “network”. He could be fined $250,000 and jailed for 10 years. That penalty was assessed for treating out of network and all sorts of other made-up crimes.
Healthcare is not a right guaranteed by the Constitution. It’s not a function that gov’t ought to be involved with at all.
Take your ideas over to DU. You’ll find them very popular over there.
I prefer the concept of paying one’s own way. Those who don’t take care of their own health or don’t pay for their own care should take what our society is willing to give them.
No one is put on ice floes. That is the kind of hyperbole liberals used to sell socialist schemes. That really irritates me.