Public option compromise
I've made my position on health care reform clear. Unfortunately it there's nobody presently in Congress advocating my common sense solutions, so there's not much chance they're going to be included in this round of health care reform. Given that, I'd like to comment on the various ideas floating around regarding health care reform.
1) Do nothing. It's clear to anyone following the state of health care in the US that this is totally unacceptable. One out of six people has no health insurance, in large part because of the skyrocketing cost of health care. This is not going to fix itself; it's just going to get worse and worse.
2) Single-payer. This is not on the table, and never has been. However, a lot of people still think it is, and it does have supporters, so I'll address it here. A single-payer health care system would be equivalent to the government taking over the entire health care sector. This system is common in other developed countries, and the problems those countries have are arguably not worse than the problems we have under our current system. There are potential benefits, such as reduced administrative overhead. However, I do not believe in the case of the United States that these benefits outweigh the costs, especially given the existence of superior options.
3) Public option. This would be equivalent to the government running an insurance company, which competes with other, private insurance companies. There are significant issues with this, especially in that it makes the crippling administrative costs of the US health system even worse than they already are. Further, the details of the implementation would determine whether this would become an inevitable slide towards the majority of people being on the public option, which would be equivalent to single-payer.
4) Insurance exchanges. This idea has not been clearly explained by those advocating it, which is a massive failure of leadership on their part. I do not here propose to rectify their mistake; that would be an entirely different post. However, I will say that I am entirely opposed to the idea of forcing people, by law, to do business with private entities. I would consider even single-payer to be preferable. The entire concept was clearly created for the benefit of the insurance companies, who would by law have fifty million new customers.
Each one has its supporters. I'm not a supporter of any of them. Out of the four, I consider a public option to be the least bad, but still worse than simply fixing a truly market-based system. However, this article from the Washington Post illustrates how health care reform should have been handled from the beginning. If one state wants to have a public option, and another state doesn't, why shouldn't that be possible? Why not have a national public option that each state can elect to participate in or opt out of? There is no reason at all that a single solution needs to be forced on everyone.
A system that improves your ability to choose between different options is usually going to be preferable to one that doesn't. A system that allows different states to choose what works for them on what is basically a local issue is better than a system that doesn't. And with this system, we can see what really works and what doesn't, instead of just arguing about ideas that haven't been tried. The same can be said for the minimum wage, or some kinds of pollution controls. This is the kind of reasoning that should have been used at the beginning of this debate.
It's about time.
1) Do nothing. It's clear to anyone following the state of health care in the US that this is totally unacceptable. One out of six people has no health insurance, in large part because of the skyrocketing cost of health care. This is not going to fix itself; it's just going to get worse and worse.
2) Single-payer. This is not on the table, and never has been. However, a lot of people still think it is, and it does have supporters, so I'll address it here. A single-payer health care system would be equivalent to the government taking over the entire health care sector. This system is common in other developed countries, and the problems those countries have are arguably not worse than the problems we have under our current system. There are potential benefits, such as reduced administrative overhead. However, I do not believe in the case of the United States that these benefits outweigh the costs, especially given the existence of superior options.
3) Public option. This would be equivalent to the government running an insurance company, which competes with other, private insurance companies. There are significant issues with this, especially in that it makes the crippling administrative costs of the US health system even worse than they already are. Further, the details of the implementation would determine whether this would become an inevitable slide towards the majority of people being on the public option, which would be equivalent to single-payer.
4) Insurance exchanges. This idea has not been clearly explained by those advocating it, which is a massive failure of leadership on their part. I do not here propose to rectify their mistake; that would be an entirely different post. However, I will say that I am entirely opposed to the idea of forcing people, by law, to do business with private entities. I would consider even single-payer to be preferable. The entire concept was clearly created for the benefit of the insurance companies, who would by law have fifty million new customers.
Each one has its supporters. I'm not a supporter of any of them. Out of the four, I consider a public option to be the least bad, but still worse than simply fixing a truly market-based system. However, this article from the Washington Post illustrates how health care reform should have been handled from the beginning. If one state wants to have a public option, and another state doesn't, why shouldn't that be possible? Why not have a national public option that each state can elect to participate in or opt out of? There is no reason at all that a single solution needs to be forced on everyone.
A system that improves your ability to choose between different options is usually going to be preferable to one that doesn't. A system that allows different states to choose what works for them on what is basically a local issue is better than a system that doesn't. And with this system, we can see what really works and what doesn't, instead of just arguing about ideas that haven't been tried. The same can be said for the minimum wage, or some kinds of pollution controls. This is the kind of reasoning that should have been used at the beginning of this debate.
It's about time.
posted by Stephen Collings at
1:11 PM
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