Perhaps this kind of system should be looked at as replacement of Obamacare.
That’s what bugs me about the “debate” over health care in this country.
There are hundreds of national systems around the world, with some dozens of them working reasonably well, arguably better than the American system.
But conservatives somehow got locked into “conserving” the present IMO indefensible system, and liberals got locked into the notion that single-payer is the ideal with total government control of an ostensibly private system the fallback position.
And absolutely nobody looks at or discusses what might be better alternatives beyond these two or three positions.
For instance, in America health insurance is tied to your employment, which is the consequence of wage and price freezes during WWII. It makes no sense from any rational POV. Yet here we are stuck with it 75 years later.
Conservatives holler about keeping our freedoms, when the present system is shot through with government controls, not to mention private insurer rules, leaving precious little freedom for individuals to make their own decisions. We have an illusion of private control with a reality of burdensome regulations that negate most of that control.
Why not scrap the whole system and start from scratch? Look at systems around the world and design one that would work better here.
Yep. But instead of a full bureaucracy for those who don't have the means to purchase health insurance, or for those who either can't purchase it because of pre-existing conditions, or it is prohibitively expensive, do it by govt. grant.
For everyone else, make it possible to buy insurance, not connected to an employer, with PRE-tax dollars, in a full free market, across state lines, etc. If they don't want to spend the money on insurance, make sure that when they incur health expenses, they're put on a payment plan until they pay off their debt. Maybe doing that enough times will encourage those who just don't bother, because they don't think they will ever need it, to finally get it.