The always-brilliant Cato Institute have come up with an idea. Since many people on the right are warming to the idea that some form of suckle-at-nanny’s-ample-teat statism is necessary to provide healthcare to Americans, they’ve come up with a novel counterweight: The Anti-Universal Coverage Club. Here are the rules.
1. Health policy should focus on making health care of ever-increasing quality available to an ever-increasing number of people.
2. To achieve “universal coverage” would require either having the government provide health insurance to everyone or forcing everyone to buy it. Government provision is undesirable, because government does a poor job of improving quality or efficiency. Forcing people to get insurance would lead to a worse health-care system for everyone, because it would necessitate so much more government intervention.
3. In a free country, people should have the right to refuse health insurance.
4. If governments must subsidize those who cannot afford medical care, they should be free to experiment with different types of subsidies (cash, vouchers, insurance, public clinics & hospitals, uncompensated care payments, etc.) and tax exemptions, rather than be forced by a policy of “universal coverage” to subsidize people via “insurance.”
This is where I am coming from. Moore has done this country a service by pointing out the glaring flaws in our system. The question now becomes, do we use ingenuity and intelligence to come up with a novel solution? Or do we merely sign up to become nothing more than the latest country to buy into the great socialist lie?
I like #1. Makes sense.
I like the second sentence in #2. I agree that government would make a horrible, bloated, expensive mess out of a single-payer system. I disagree with the blanket (and rather simplistic) proclamations in the second half of #2. I am starting to think a basic package required by all is a smart idea. It works for car insurance, there is an economic model from which to begin. I know - health is not driving. But it is a model, or an idea, from which to begin. Government doesn’t manage to screw that up too badly, and there’s no evidence in the National Review article to suggest that it’s absolutely a given that such a system would fail due to lobbying.
We could of course kill all the lobbyists. But that’s a whole other discussion. :)
I get #3 in theory, but we do not live in a pure libertarian fantasy world. We’re required to carry all sorts of insurance for all sorts of reasons. Health care in this country is a big burden on the federal coffers. With some level of basic care that CANNOT be removed by an over-zealous insurance adjuster, general health in America would improve over the next generation or two. Healthier people produce more, grow the economy better and cost the government less in the long run.
I feel like #3 is a pure libertarian’s “We shouldn’t have a standing army” or “The IRS is illegal and I’m my own country now” fantasy. Some kind of system that gives basic care to all WILL happen, and we need to find out the smartest, cheapest and most effective way to make it happen before someone slips a single-payer system past our noses. If anyone thinks that a bill like that couldn’t be passed without huge public outcry preventing it, may I remind you about Moore’s discussion of the USA-PATRIOT Act? It might be the only real true thing in F911: No one read the damn bill. Regardless of how you feel about it, we barely heard a whisper about it before it was law, and it was passed without anyone reading it...it was that complex and confusing. Anyone think special magic universal coverage for all will be any less of a boondoggle? Also, as far as passing things no one wants, can I call your attention to the current amnesty sham in Congress? Americans are vehemently opposed to this bill but the kings and queens on Capitol Hill are bound and determined to do for the peasants what they won’t do for themselves.
If #3 is to be remotely possible, a person would have to demonstrate either remarkable health, or the means to pay the bills on their own in order to opt out. Otherwise we’d be right where we are now: A system where the poor decide not to get any coverage and instead rely on hospitals and emergency care facilities and then don’t pay the bill. Or, they go on Medicare or Medicaid depending on age.
I’m all about #4. We need pilot programs all over the country to experiment with systems and learn how to provide the best care possible for the least amount of money (and stress on the patient).
Something Cato forgot to add as a possibility: We could try to reform the industry we have, find out EXACTLY why it’s so ridiculously expensive and find ways to reduce the numbers, while at the same time closing some of the loopholes that insurance companies use to deny necessary and needed care to patients. That may not work in the end, but it is an idea worth exploring.
And dat be my $0.02.
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