Ezra Klein on Hillary’s Health Care Plan
The short answer: Her plan is very, very good. With a follow-up opinion as well.
And the hilarious Cato response. It is apparently terrible because:
It restricts individual choice and liberty. Just like gasoline taxes to pay for road repairs do, and local taxes fund police and fire departments. Damn those restrictions on individual liberty! I should be allowed to not pay for fire department funding, because I damn well know a fire will never happen in my home! (The corrolary: I’ll never get sick!)
As a result the young and healthy will be forced to pay more in order to subsidize the older and sicker. Why, yes, Cato Institute, you sleuths you, you’ve uncovered the elephant in the room! With health insurance, the healthy pay for the sick! And hey, look at that–when I pay for car insurance, it’s to help pay for someone else’s car accident, when I’m not having one! Amazing! Brilliant work you’re doing over there!
While the lack of details makes the plan difficult to evaluate fully, the continued presence of private insurance companies in the game makes the possibility of any actual “reform” dubious. While I suppose it might be possible to regulate and standardize what insurance companies can do (as with “Medigap” Medicare supplement plans today), you still have the complexity and expense of multiple private bureaucracies.
I suppose that just as in 1994, it is realistically impossible even to conceive of doing away with private insurance companies. They’re just too powerful, and they have unlimited resources to spend on maintaining the status quo. What I’m afraid of is that her attempt to neuter them will at best be only half-successful. The one remaining gonad will be more than sufficient for greedy insurance companies to continue screwing the American public.
I’m certainly encouraged by the Democratic candidates’ willingness to admit to the problem and to propose well-intended reforms (have any of the Republicans offered anything concrete beyond our Leader’s suggestion that the uninsured can go to the emergency room?) We’ll just have to see what happens.
I always love the “universal healthcare infringes on individual liberty” argument. I just want to give the people who say that a hug and say “it isn’t
all about you!” Is the greater impact on you maybe not getting to choose which doctor you go to, or on the person who’s quality of life skyrockets because they are able to get a medication or procedure they desperately need?
“the young and healthy have to pay to subsidize for the old and sick”. Ummm… they already do! I don’t get to call Aetna and tell them that because I wasn’t sick this month, they should refund my money.