It will become illegal to refuse to insure any consumer on any grounds, including evidence of insurability. In addition to being unable to exclude future enrollees, insurers will be prevented from legally dropping any consumers from their plans. FULL ARTICLE by Eric M. Staib
Source link: http://blog.mises.org/11271/new-regulations-will-destroy-the-insurance-market/
New Regulations Will Destroy the Insurance Market
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Is it even possible for insurance companies to survive with these regulations? Are there examples of countries where similar laws have been enacted? What have the results been?
“Therefore, in the very next page of the bill, House Democrats propose to outlaw all variations in premiums except according to geographical area, age group,”
A lot of articles I have seen about this have stated that insurance companies wouldn’t be allowed to discriminate between age groups. Turns out not to be the whole truth (Yeah, they aren’t allowed to… except through some weird ratio system. Where do they come up with this crap?).
I must say I agree with the author somewhat. However, a good economist sees what is not seen. Truly this is just a political action, but in the long run I see it as a small step towards a better health care system. To even consider to leave the system unchanged is shameful and inhumane.
Gandhi once said “an eye for an eye would leave humanity completely blind”. I would to tell you that a “100% free market ( no govt) would leave humanity sold out”.
“The market is what we do NOT who we are”
I hope to see one day a humane health care system.
Julio,
What is this better health care system you speak of?
When considering that the insurance lobby had a huge hand in writing this bill, I think they will be OK. Lots of goodies will be thrown their way to compensate them. It will kill them in a free-market sense however, and make them more fascist/corporatist than they currently are.
Then of course, anti-capitalist demagogues will denounce this as some sort of “market failure”.
Considering that insurance companies are the real alternatives to government action – that would naturally be able to challenge almost every aspect of the State monopolies, isn’t it quite normal that monopoly government seeks to weaken or crush them ?
I’ve long maintained that “health insurance” is a category mistake. The “insurance model” simply doesn’t fit the need for universal health care services, which are equivalent to a “right” in the sense of having “a right to life” and the means to protect one’s life and health.
By making healthcare into just another for-profit “commodity”, the traditional view of medicine has been subverted. Although doctors have always been suspected as a class for extorting maximum fees from dying people and their families, the current system institutionalizes these motives.
Why is “health insurance” a category mistake? Because we are not “insuring” our health, but only buying a certain amount of access to health care (you don’t get admitted or treated without proof of ability to pay), and then protecting our assets from being confiscated by medical providers and their collection agencies (lawyers). Having insurance lets the insurance companies decide what and how much they will pay. However, the trend now is for hospitals and other providers to be able to still collect their fraudulent, inflated bills if one’s insurance company refuses to do so! So, even as a “protection racket,” insurance fails to provide the “protection” as advertised.
Staib is correct that all the new regulations will greatly increase insurance costs, without providing any additional benefits or services. This illustrates another fallacy of the “insurance model.” Actuarial risk (on which insurance costs are based) varies widely for different classes of customers. I’ve read that those aged 55-65 can pay 5 times more for “health insurance” than those aged 20-30. And of course any “pre-existing conditions” (a nebulous and impossible to accurately define category) will increase the risk that much more.
The whole idea of a “robust public option” was to remove all such people from the insurance pools. Since insurance companies don’t want to provide insurance for these high-risk groups, and even if they did, it would be unaffordable – for individuals, employers, or the state – the original idea was simply to put all these people into some sort of Medicare-like program. As it is, either providers treat them under minimal medicaid reimbursements (which would be more than adequate to cover the marginal costs of treatment in an efficient, competitive system, with large public hospitals and other facilities geared to provide these services), or simply write off the costs of treatment as “charity” and shift part of the costs to those with insurance.
Something that is never mentioned is that those without insurance are typically billed about 4 times more than even good insurance policies would reimburse. This is justified as an “incentive” to force everyone to purchase insurance. And such bills (fraudulent, in my opinion) are collectable in law. They take your house, savings, pensions, etc. unless you take extreme measures beforehand to shelter them (like sending them to secret off-shore accounts).
So, the present system is basically the same as a mafia protection racket – your money or your life. And, I have little sympathy with the “insurance industry” because they are the major proponents of the present system.
Single Payer (like Canada’s) is not ideal, but it would halve our healthcare costs as a percent of GDP. Simply outlawing private insurance, and allowing anyone to enroll in Medicare (financed by payroll taxes – or even better, a carbon tax) would be a good “bridge” solution. And of course we should eliminate all the monopoly power, occupational licensure, trade restrictions, etc. which presently make U.S. medical care so expensive. They are actually closing medical schools in the United States to further restrict supply and raise fees (costs or prices). And many large, public hospitals are being closed or downsized for the same reasons.
I’m happy that, as things appear today, there will be no public option in this healthcare bill, but “Senator Joseph Lieberman’s courageous stand” is a lot of garbage. Lieberman is from Connecticut which is home to many of the largest health insurance companies in the country. He’s just serving the interests of those corporations, not the interests of individuals. Introducing legislation to abolish Medicare and Medicaid would be courageous.
I hope to see one day a humane health care system.
I, too, look forward to the day when people like you stop calling for the enslavement of others.
I am forced to pay for public schooling, public police, public firemen, car insurance and no one complains. But try to suggest that we have a public health care system and the world is turned upside down. The reason: only health care is the domain of the wealthy public companies that make obscene profits at the expense of the public. Private enterprise- give me a break.
Julio: “However, a good economist sees what is not seen”
Wow! How such a correct statement can be used to advocate for more interventionist policies is remarkable!
What next? The “invisible hand” will be used to advocate for more central planning?
Hello Paul Stevens,
Can you please demonstrate how any sort of “public” or “universal” (i.e. government-controlled) healthcare system is able to override such economic laws as scarcity or supply and demand? Thanks in advance.
P.S. I’ll be pleasantly surprised if you actually respond to this.
john wrote: “The reason: only health care is the domain of the wealthy public companies that make obscene profits at the expense of the public.”
Can you elaborate on what you mean by this?
Dear Julio, Paul Stephens, john ….
Lets say that me and a few hundred of my friends believe strongly that the health of poor people should be taken care of (I do). So we get together and form a group, and agree to pay each other’s medical bills, and even invite in a few poor people and families in the community to join free of cost. We even hire a few medical students to offer free care to members, on simple items like surface wounds, and stockpile antibiotics, for the occasional basic infection. Perhaps even hire a former dental assistant to clean peoples teeth and do basic maintenance free of cost to members.
Sounds pretty reasonable right? Well, nope, if you dare even try such a venture the government, insurance regulations, medical regulations, pharmaceutical regulations, licensing regulations … will pound the living daylights out of you. Should you dare form such a plan, you will be lucky to escape with your life while Bubba, a convicted murderer, pounds your face in to within an inch of death from inside the prison facility you have pre-destined yourself to be put in.
Get it. Meeting peoples health care needs is not a problem in a free market. Having the government involved in the insurance and medical business is cruellest form of tyranny.
Wonderful post, David C!
Once again the Congress’ intervention in the private insurance market is turning the pricing of risk on its head. Their last intervention was a major factor in the MBS – CDO debacle in 2008, and they are geared up for more intervention as we consider health care reform, climate control legislation, etc.
While the elimination of pre-existing conditions and heavier regulation of insurance companies may make one temporarily feel better that the “other” rich guy or company is going to pay, it is certainly not a sustainable economic business model. Witness the multi-trillion dollar unfunded liabilities of Medicare. If you agree with the proposed health care reform legislation being enacted in Congress, then you should advocate for the elimination of other known “risks” when buying insurance. For example, you could mandate that insurance companies cover household property after being damaged by flood, fire, hurricane, earthquake, etc. or why not mandate that a married spouse be permitted to buy “life” insurance after his or her spouse dies? These are all tragedies that cause American families financial hardships every day.
In my view, sustainable health care reform means that the provision of health care insurance is severed from the employee-employer relationship, and that health care insurance returns to covering catastrophic, higher risk medical conditions. Routine medical visits and the drugs and procedures necessary to handle manageable chronic illnesses will have to be paid for by individual patients because the cost of insuring these manageable risks is becoming prohibitive. The cost shifting from Medicare, Medicaid, and other uncompensated costs will continue to burden the private health care system if Congressional health care reform becomes law.
Lastly, no mandated system of wage and price controls will produce better health care or greater access to health care. If it did, then one would not see restrictions based on age or current health status placed on immigration to countries that have universal health care such as Australia and New Zealand among others.
@ David C
My definition of free market differs from yours. I see govt like a baseball game. We need umpires in order to play. However, things get out of hand when umpires begin to play baseball or take sides or stimulate the game.
I believe we have few government intervention in the economy while you think otherwise. What I do see a lot, are few individuals, families and corporations behind the government system to corrupt it in order to enrich themselves.
Health care is one of this corrupt tools.
As you see my friend, we dont need to eliminate the umpires, we just need to replace them with good ones.
An Austrian solution to all this is just a simple one “eliminate government whenever, where ever possible”. This is the same as a doctor wanting to cut your head off because it hurts.
@JULIO
“free market” means the voluntary exchange of goods and services. That’s the definition in every dictionary on the planet as far as I know.
I provided an example of the free market providing health care for the poor, and how the state destroys that. It was a very fundamental example. That kind of interference happens every day.
It’s not that hard to imagine the free market providing health care without an “umpire”. I imagined it. It was realistic. It is the truth, and humanitarian. What does “umpire” have anything to do with it?
Also, I could see how coercing other people to do what I want is morally wrong, but I don’t see how enriching myself is. Every body wants to enrich themselves. What’s wrong with that? Are doctors supposed to be your slaves, doing whatever you demand free of charge? Is it your moral right to point a gun to their face and make them do what you demand without profit?
“I believe we have few government intervention in the economy”
Julio is a good joker. Perhaps he should read the budget or the US regulatory code.
It’s not a Health Care Plan at all. It’s an anti-healthcare plan designed to solve the problems with Social Security and Medicare. It’s designed to make healthcare unavailable to us so we will die sooner. It’s major effect will be to make it impossible for us to buy the healthcare we need.
Julio,
Philosophers had long since been eager to ascertain the ends which God or Nature was trying to realize in the course of human history. They searched for the law of mankind’s destiny and evolution. But even those thinkers whose inquiry was free from any theological tendency failed utterly in these endeavors because they were committed to a faulty method. They dealt with humanity as a whole or with other holistic concepts like nation, race, or church. They set up quite arbitrarily the ends to which the behavior of such wholes is bound to lead. But they could not satisfactorily answer the question regarding what factors compelled the various acting individuals to behave in such a way that the goal aimed at by the whole’s inexorable evolution was attained. They had recourse to desperate shifts: miraculous interference of the Deity either by revelation or by the delegation of God-sent prophets and consecrated leaders, preestablished harmony, predestination, or the operation of a mystic and fabulous “world soul” or “national soul.” Others spoke of a “cunning of nature” which implanted in man impulses driving him unwittingly along precisely the path Nature wanted him to take.
Other philosophers were more realistic. They did not try to guess the designs of Nature or God. They looked at human things from the viewpoint of government. They were intent upon establishing rules of political action, a technique, as it were, of government and statesmanship. Speculative minds drew ambitious plans for a thorough reform and reconstruction of society. The more modest were satisfied with a collection and systematization of the data of historical experience. But all were fully convinced that there was in the course of social events no such regularity and invariance of phenomena as had already been found in the operation of human reasoning and in the sequence of natural phenomena. They did not search for the laws of social cooperation because they thought that man could organize society as he pleased. If social conditions did not fulfill the wishes of the reformers, if their utopias proved unrealizable, the fault was seen in the moral failure of man. Social problems were considered ethical problems. What was needed in order to construct the ideal society, they thought, were good princes and virtuous citizens. With righteous men any utopia might be realized.
The discovery of the inescapable interdependence of market phenomena overthrew this opinion. Bewildered, people had to face a new view of society. They learned with stupefaction that there is another aspect from which human action might be viewed than that of good and bad, of fair and unfair, of just and unjust. In the course of social events there prevails a regularity of phenomena to which man must adjust his actions if he wishes to succeed. It is futile to approach social facts with the attitude of a censor who approves or disapproves from the point of view of quite arbitrary standards and subjective judgments of value. One must study the laws of human action and social cooperation as the physicist studies the laws of nature. Human action and social cooperation seen as the object of a science of given relations, no longer as a normative discipline of things that ought to be–this was a revolution of tremendous consequences for knowledge and philosophy as well as for social action.
RE: Autolykos
Hello Paul Stevens,
“Can you please demonstrate how any sort of “public” or “universal” (i.e. government-controlled) healthcare system is able to override such economic laws as scarcity or supply and demand? Thanks in advance.”
I don’t recall making any such claim. ANY “3rd party payer” is going to “distort the market” and thus increase costs, fraud, etc. (not to mention a 30% “rake-off” to support the 2 million or more people who work for the “insurance industry”, collection agencies, billing departments, etc. – “Medical Keynesianism” with a vengeance).
For those who don’t like “socialized medicine” (what they have in Britain, for example, where all medical providers were originally “nationalized” and put on the government payroll), you shouldn’t like “socialized education” or a “socialized police force” or military like we have, here. And, we know that partial “privatization” of these services results in more problems than are solved.
Single Payer healthcare is equivalent to a Voucher System for public education. And Britain and most other countries have that – private schools are mostly subsidized by the state, subject to inspections and meeting minimal curriculum standards. But diversity, choice, and “site-based management” are maintained, unlike the public schools here.
So, there’s nothing new or “revolutionary” in a Single Payer system, which we should all agree is vastly superior to total “socialized medicine” organized as state bureaucracies.
Single-Payer “nationalizes” the insurance industry, while leaving all providers free to continue as they are. They just have to use cost-based pricing, and not collect their bills by legal confiscation of patient’s assets. A flat 7% tax on all incomes over $50,000/year or a comparable VAT would cover everyone’s medical care – surely a much better solution than what we have, now, or the current bills in Congress. If you include the taxes which “non-profits” don’t pay now, nearly 60% of health care costs in the U.S are already paid for by federal and state agencies. And this is sufficient in itself to cover everyone with quality healthcare, end-of-life care, etc. So, we’re already spending twice as much as we need to, for a very inferior product which isn’t even available to 55 million people, and many more won’t use their insurance because they can’t afford the co-pays, or the rate increases which might occur from actually using it.
Since I believe that “health insurance” is a fiction and a fraud, I’m not worried about nationalizing this “industry.”
For those who don’t like “socialized medicine” (what they have in Britain, for example, where all medical providers were originally “nationalized” and put on the government payroll), you shouldn’t like “socialized education” or a “socialized police force” or military like we have, here.
You’re right, I don’t. No matter what your end is, I do not like your attempt to enslave me in order to obtain it.
“Truly this is just a political action, but in the long run I see it as a small step towards a better health care system. To even consider to leave the system unchanged is shameful and inhumane.”
I gather that “a better health care system” means, “like Canada or France” but I think it is a mistake to consider these as any kind of model which should be (or can be) followed. These “single payer” systems only exist thanks to (1) the magic of exponentially rising government debt and central bank inflation, and (2) unique demographic conditions which until now have meant a large number of taxpayers compared to the number of people consuming health care services (i.e. the ratio of young people to old).
The era of gigantic government debt is drawing to a close. The real savings to invest in government bonds don’t exist any more in the countries with socialist health care, and the countries which have significant savings will not throw them away paying for other countries’ welfare systems, because the repayment (in real money) will never happen. And the demographic factors are simply inescapable.
Hey JULIO. You are a goo-goo. See below.
http://mises.org/daily/3921
JULIO;
“My definition of free market differs from yours. I see govt like a baseball game. We need umpires in order to play. However, things get out of hand when umpires begin to play baseball or take sides or stimulate the game.”
Julio, nice analogy. To add, we also have umpires taking bets and umpires who think that they should be allowed to step up to the plate or go to the mound because they think they could do better that the players.
As bad as this bill sounds, it won’t change much. I work for an HMO and we have had most of the components mentioned for many years. We must submit rate changes to the state insurance commission for approval, and we already have the 2:1 rule on the range of rates. We will definately have to go back for rate increases to cover the increased demand for healthcare and to cover those with pre-existing conditions, but the commission knows that we need to survive, so they’ll let us have a 4-5% profit total profit per year. However, I feel sorry for the people who will have to pay the higher premiums. Maybe we can keep them from rising so much by reducing benefits some.
Also, 40% of our business is Medicare and CMS determines the rates that we pay doctors and the amount of coverage.
Congress wants to fool the people into thinking they are doing something new. They’re not. The only real change will be that we can’t exclude people for pre-existing conditions. However, we pay into a state pool to help cover those who can’t get insurance because of pre-existing conditions, so we’ll just keep that money.
Paul Stevens
What a brilliant idea. I can see absolutely no problem with eliminating all those pesky details associated with the free market, like the laws of scarcity, supply and demand and impact of prices, and replacing it with a simple system where everyone has to pay for everyone else.
After reading your post, I think we should have a single payer system in everything. Including food, transportation, internet and every other good necessary for our lives and comfort.
To perfect the umpire analogy that is being used…
Once there were people playing a friendly game of baseball. They were having a good time and they had appointed friends to be umpires. Then one day some men came saying that they were true and fair umpires. They would call the games from then on. If the players didn’t like it, they could pay a fine, rot in jail, and/or die.
So the game went on, but it wasn’t near as fun as it could be.
Funding affects usage If a person is paying for all health services out of his pocket, and nobody offers any free work and would even refuse care if he couldn’t prove that he can pay, he will take fewer risks. If a person pays a fixed amount per year and can get all the services he wants, he will ask for much more.
Regulations affect efficiency The more regulations, the more hampered the market is at reducing the cost of services. The costs come from the extra resources needed to ensure compliance, and the limitations they put on how things can be run.
Prices driven down only when user pays portion If the person selecting a provider must also pay more for more expensive providers, he will take price into account. If the person paying is not the person choosing the provider, cost won’t factor into his decision and thus there won’t be competition for lower prices.
To Tim,
“After reading your post, I think we should have a single payer system in everything. Including food, transportation, internet and every other good necessary for our lives and comfort.”
You don’t need it in everything. See Michael Albert’s Parecon for an example of something like that (Participatory Economics – http://www.zmag.org ). And of course it should be means-tested. It’s essential “public goods”/welfare services that need to be guaranteed by the state. Free public transportation would be a big help in restoring the economy as well as the environment.
You know, before Ayn Rand, most conservatives weren’t Social Darwinists (anti-altruists). In that respect, Ayn Rand was closely related to the Nazi or other “superior race” thinkers. It really has no place in Libertarianism.
I get $503/month Social Security (enough to pay my rent and utilities in rural Montana), and a $190/month debit card for food (about twice what I used to spend on my own – scavenging sales, free snacks, day-old bread, etc. The main difference is that I can now eat fresh vegetables and avoid corn sweetener and other GMO-contaminated food).
So, I’m already living in this “socialist utopia.” I’m only 62, though, so I won’t get Medicare for another 3 years, but I don’t use most high-tech, Pharma stuff, anyway. If I get cancer or have a heart attack, I’ll be content to die, having lived a lot longer than I expected to, already. And I don’t have kids to worry about, which must drive most people with kids and grand-kids crazy. We know the whole system is collapsing, and there’s basically nothing we can do about it.
This whole “health care debate” (transmogrified into a “health insurance debate”) says it all.
“You know, before Ayn Rand, most conservatives weren’t Social Darwinists (anti-altruists). In that respect, Ayn Rand was closely related to the Nazi or other “superior race” thinkers. It really has no place in Libertarianism. ”
Mindless histrionics. Of course, we’re not conservatives nor are we social darwinists but institutional darwinists… socialism deserves to fail hard. What would be better than the current system? A free market one. Not the Canadian joke. No thanks to ANY government intervention. Any and all. None.
Julio, please keep your predatory aspirations and silly ideals to yourself. We’ve no need for further “compassionate” tyrants.
“It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be a ‘dismal science.’ But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance.” – Murray Rothbard
So people need to read this very carefully.
*Some
Julio strung together incomprehensible logic and left incoherent scatter:
I hope to see one day a humane health care system.
Deciding to take from others is very humane for those you decide will benefit from it, and very inhumane to all those whom you deprive thereby. How nice of you.
@matskralc & DD: totally agreed!
@David C: Exactly!!!
@Julio: the doctor can want what he likes. At the risk of calling you a fool, would you agree? The whole point of the free market is that each person has the power to decide whether they want something or not. For others’ to determine our “permitted” tolerance and desire is tantamount to slavery, uniformity, and decline of civilization.
@Paul Stephens: yes, everyone “wants” to have an easy deal and externalize risks, throw out the risky people. The point of competition is that is forces those who want to make a living, though they might have such a wet dream about getting something they want from others at no risk to themselves, to engage in innovation and take risk in order to make profit. The only group that does manage to externalize risk (until the blowback comes) is the government, which forces the taxpayers to cover everything.
Paul Stephens wrote:
A flat 7% tax on all incomes over $50,000/year or a comparable VAT would cover everyone’s medical care
Yeah, right! That’s on a par with the declaration that “there are no discoveries to be made”. Get real, have you heard of the interesting term “innovation”?
Your whole paradigm is wrong: there is no such thing as needed stuff for everyone, nothing that needs to be guaranteed by anyone to anyone else by forcing people to submit to your will.
If you don’t like freedom or liberty, just come right out and say it.
It is so easy to draw conclusions that are simple and neat but your youth is your Achilles’ heel. Eventually, you will receive an education that only time and fate relinquish.
“Democrats are aware of this effect of their policy, and have legislated accordingly. Pages 296–300 amend federal tax law to create a new tax on all citizens who fail to purchase health insurance. Depriving these individuals of the ability to opt out of the new, undifferentiated insurance pool is an atrocious affront to individual choice, and requires the threat of imprisonment.”
I think that Democrats are understimating the threat of the 2nd Amendment and the high risk of social unrest and civil war related to such coercion.
JULIO,
“I hope to see one day a humane health care system.”
Free market capitalism, private property rights and individual freedom is the only way for a humane health care system. One where the patient is in charge, where he is free and responsible for himself.
Inquisitor,
“most conservatives weren’t Social Darwinists (anti-altruists).”
Social Darwinism isn’t about anti-altruisum, it’s about being the most popular and accepted person in society. Such as rock stars, popular presidents, popular in school, popular in your family etc.
The more popular you are, the better chances you have to get a high paying job, the better chances you have to get away with crime, the better chances you have to be supported by other people if you are in need.
Social Darwinism is about climbing to the top. Most anti-altruists are lonely individuals pinching their pennies with no hope of rising to power or improving their situations. I know, I am an anti-altruist myself.
Tall and beautiful person are already advantaged from a social darwinist perspective.
Short and ugly people are disadvantaged.
Politics is the perfect example of social-darwinism. Barack Obama is VERY altruist and that’s how he climbs to the top.
Inquisitor,
Darwinism is about the survival of the fittest, not the survival of the biggest asshole.
In an environment where peer pressure wants you to be altruist, socialist, environmentalist, anti-altruists can’t survive.
In an environment where it’s everybody for himself, altruists can’t survive.
Darwinism is about adapting yourself to your environment.
Social Darwinism is about adapting yourself to society. Our society demands tall, good looking and charming individuals that at least profess a message of altruism on the surface.
Richie,
At the individual level, economics is really simple even a kindergarten child can understand it.
It’s about living within your means. There’s nothing to be ignorant about that.
Every damn fool knows that if you have $5.00 you can’t buy a $6.00 sandwich.
Every damn fool knows that if you want to enrich yourself you have to at least save some money and accumulate over time.
That’s really all there is to know about economics.
The problem about economic ignorance stems from government redistributionist schemes and macro-economics. People think that since the government can create money, it can also create wealth. This is absolutely false.
If factory workers were given their full paychecks instead of being taxed and if they had to pay everything by themselves instead of relying on government subsidies, they would be economic experts themselves. They would live within their means and limit the number of children they have etc.
Somehow, our socialist government and socialist media made people ignorant about economics. Every people think that wealth is something you share, not something you create. That’s a big mistake.
Even if we were to take all the money from the rich and divide it equally among all people. The people would still be dirt poor. It’s up to each and everyone to pull his own weight.
The rich in America own collectively 5 Trillion dollars, divide this by 300 Million Americans and you get $16,666 per person. Hardly anything to retire on.
The rich are a distraction. There is simply not enough wealth to subsidize health care and every other things in America. People pull your own weight.
Taxing the rich will only spread poverty.
I am not attacking Senator Lieberman personally but I do wonder at your sentence in which he is described as courageous for taking a stand against the “public option.” Since Mr. Lieberman is representing Connecticut, the location of Hartford, the home of the private insurance corporations, I hardly think his stand took courage. This is merely politics as usual.
As for the “right” stand on healthcare, I can only point to the Veterinarians who receive little in the way of either insurance or government monies and provide incredible service for little cost. Maybe we need to do as the Amish do and pay cash for services desired. Those who want to and can afford to can pay for insurance.
With proper diet and exercise, most illnesses will resolve spontaneously without medical intervention, a fact known by all of us insiders in the medical field. Doctors cannot fix what people refuse to take self-responsibility for.
Really, an awesome article here. I am extremely impressed that you’re an undergrad. I’m a year removed from my econ undergrad degree, and I know I couldn’t have written such a well-written and thoughtful argument.
Brilliant job.
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The “risk pools” idea, carried to its logical conclusion, would mean each individual pays for his own health care. No one in that circumstance would ever be paying for someone else. The function of the insurance company would be to provide some level of predictability to a person’s life, i.e. money payed in during times of good health could be used for medical emergencies when they arise.
The basic problem I see is the usual statist irrational belief that there is indeed a free lunch. Everybody dies, and nobody is healthy when they die. Ultimately, the state is enlisted in a battle against death, but the only means the state has to fight death is – death.
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How are they going to be able to provide insurance for every consumer? This is what happens when you take regulations like this to the extreme and that is why europes economies are starting to fail now.
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