Those fighting over implementing individual mandates or not are losing sight of the bigger picture.
Again, the focus on universal coverage takes attention away from cost-containment – which is the more serious problem.
Related posts:
- Atul Gawande on health reform
- Containing health care costs
- Op-ed: Shortage of primary care threatens health care system
- Did Obama provide any health care clues in his inaugural address?
- Rationing care is inevitable to control health care costs
- Medicare and cutting health care costs
- Primary care incomes and universal health coverage
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Forcing people to buy into an unfair and dysfunctional system isn’t going to help a thing.
It is a bit like solving homelessness by making it illegal to be homeless.
What would help is to recognize that health care, health insurance, and health are not the same thing, that none of them are rights, or even necessities actually–society will go on, people will be born and the death rate will remain 100% with or without the first two, and we will all lose the last eventually.
It will also help to recognize that, fear of death and narcissism being so nearly universal, individuals will continue to demand more and more healthcare as science and their ability to pay (or ability to convince others pay) expand. As long as it is their wealth they are allocating, it is not inherently a bad thing any more than people spending more money on housecleaning or DVD’s. It is only the business of the collective to what extent it is the collective that is doing the spending.
We are just beginning to get around to the always inevitable reality that collectivizing the expenditure entail the loss of personal choice.
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