Universal health care
Here is my column for Tuesday, in which I ask why we don't want our employers to manage our food, housing and transportation purchases, but we think it is a good idea for them to decide how we get our health care. I also suggest that this relationship is a major reason we are more insecure about our next doctor visit than our next meal.
Sunday, February 26, 2006
The False Lure of Socialism
Dan Weintraub, blogger extraordinaire at the major Sacramento newspaper, had this to say earlier this week:
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6 comments:
Sounds good to me. Health care insurance from employers was a WWII expedient, and there's no need to be stuck with it forever. But what should replace it? I can't tell from the post if either Dan or Darren has an opinion.
Take the money companies are spending managing health care and pay it to the employees. Let them purchase their own coverage (or not) on the open market.
"...Let them purchase their own coverage (or not) on the open market"
Not so simple if the insurance companies can decline you for insurance at ANY cost for ANY reason.
I speak as someone who's dealing with having to pay $9100/yr for a very high deductable ($4800/yr) policy. If you're at the unfortunate age between 50-65 before you can qualify for govt MediCare, the InsCo's know you're likely to be a higher risk client.
They can't legally decline you coverage for AIDS but if you list "High Cholesterol" you are at very real risk of being declined. Even if you ARE accepted, you become a captive customer at one insurance company because as you get older, you won't be accepted anywhere else.
The bottom line goal of the InsCo's is to force older, high risk clients to quit being covered before they get sick enough to cause a pay out for anything major.
The real solution is to find a way to eliminate the link between "Insurance" and "Health Care" if that's remotely at all possible.
I don't know who can afford to go "naked", insurance wise, when something like a cancer treatments or heart bypass can cost several hundred thousand a throw?
While I'm not a fan of gov't run Universal Health Care, it will probably be the only option left after the private InsCo's get to a point that they decline all new clients over 40 yr's of age.
I've got a REALLY bad idea, let's put health care in the hands of the government.
Take a look at how that is working out for our neighbors to the north:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/26/international/americas/26canada.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Here's commentary on the NYT article from Cafe Hayek:
http://cafehayek.typepad.com/hayek/2006/02/the_death_of_th.html
At the very least, Congress should either remove the tax break on employer provided health care coverage or make it available to everyone. There's NO rational reason to tie health care to employment.
Hopefully, the Democrats won't be able to continually kill bills for health care savings accounts that are sheltered from taxes.
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