Miles Zaremski suggests a compromise to health care reform, blending the ideas from the left and right:
Why not provide a basic layer of health protection for all Americans funded with taxpayer dollars, with any additional coverage paid for by the individual, the employer, or both through the private sector? In this way, every citizen will be guaranteed a certain level of health care, while letting market forces take care of levels of health care above a certain floor.
One question needs to be answered before anything gets done. Namely, whether health care a right or not.
The country is split as to the answer to that question, mostly along partisan lines. Simply Googling this question will return a wide array of opinions. I’ve made my opinion on this quite clear in the past.
The easiest way to settle this would be to hold a national referendum, simply asking voters if there should be a right to health care.
This needs to be resolved first before proposing any health reform plan.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
The question is what constitutes basic coverage? Preventive care only? Then what happens when you do get sick? Do you cover all kids and vaccines, etc in case their parents can’t cover it? What about the elderly, do they get coverage? What about the people with cancer or chronic conditions where they can’t afford coverage?
We need to get more young healthy individuals into the risk pool since they can pay yet have less use of the system.
How about once you get coverage as a young adult, when you are healthy, why can’t you keep the policy for life no matter were you work, where you live or what illness you contract? If you are paying for the policy why with COBRA for instance is it limited to 18 months? Why can’t you keep it for life? The insurance companies would then be more focused on keeping you healthy for life and not with avoiding covering ill people.
I love people who ‘tinker’ about large issues like this. They think, “can’t we just compromise our principles and fix the problem?” Kevin is correct to point out the larger issues involved and the first commentator demonstrates the problem inherent in this ‘tinkering’ approach. What is basic coverage? Who decides? What happens when people ‘need’ more coverage but can’t afford it? Given that ‘a little bit’ of healthcare has already been conceded as a right, there is no principled argument to prevent expansion to more and more. Indeed, this is already happening with Medicare, Medicaid, coverage of children, etc..
It must be understood that making healthcare a right ends up destroying the rights of everyone else involved - including all individuals to use their money as they will (they will instead be forced to pay for healthcare for all), physicians to treat patients on their own terms (the government will control them with the purse strings and eventually in every other way), and patients to seek medical care on their own terms (the government will eventually control the industry and not give patients options).
There simply can be no ‘right’ to healthcare, or any other product or service produced by others - it only serves to destroy the rights of everyone.
The debate over rights is a red-herring (unless this post is part of a larger anarcho-capitalist manifesto). We provide universal roads, mail, and trash removal for the people at a nominal fee and I don’t recall a debate over right to a four lane highway lined conveniently with Sbarros. Society extends its people the rights it can afford, often without considering the metaphysical justification for doing so!
The far more practical question is whether we can afford universal healthcare. There are examples of hybrid systems like the one linked to in the post that work, cheaply.
Alexa-Blue simply makes my point! Because the government is already partly socialized, this is used as an argument to extend and expand its involvement to other areas of our lives! Should the government be involved in trash removal? Well that is a separate debate (my answer is no, by the way). Is doing an adequate job at trash removal justification for involving the government in the infinitely more complex business of medicine? Is it a moral justification?
Rights are not arbitrary spoils to be served up on a platter by a beneficent society. They are identifications of what protections must exist for individuals to remain free to pursue their own happiness while living in a society.