Id health care a "right"? Sounds nice, but no, it can't be.

[Mac1958]

Health care is not a "right" - we just love cramming that word into every conversation about something we want.

However, a healthy populace is good economics, and the most cost-effective way to achieve that would be by expanding the current Medicare/Medicare Supplement/Medicare Advantage program to all so that preventive, diagnostic and primary care are all low cost and easily accessed.

Adding to that would be the massive monkey we'd be taking off the back of American Business, since these plans are individual and portable and not the responsibility of employers in any way.
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Unfortunately your prescription for a "healthy populace" ignores the fact that it violates the rights of those that are forced against their will to pay for other peoples health care services, that includes paying for people that make poor health decisions. Not to mention the fact that it puts the system in the hands of the government which has demonstrated that it is completely incompetent when it comes to health care, just look at the financial state of Medicare (with unfunded liabilities approaching $30 TRILLION and sucking up an ever increasing share of the federal budget), we can't afford to pay for the shitty system of government health care entitlements we have right now and you want to add more? Ever since the federal government got into the health care game the system has had a long slide downhill and adding more of the disease isn't the cure.

I'm greedy.

I don't like having to pay higher health insurance premiums because I'm paying for the people you mention, those who make poor health decisions and who end up needing far more care than they would have, and still access care.

I don't like having to pay higher health insurance premiums because those who don't have access to preventive and diagnostic services wait until their conditions are far worse and they need far more care.

I don't like having to pay premiums in a health care system that has no less than SEVEN (7) different payment systems, none of which coordinate directly with each other: Medicare, Medicaid, VA, Workers Comp, Group, Individual/ACA, and indigent.

I don't like seeing how much my business clients are paying in health insurance premiums for their employees, especially when we both know there's no reason an employer should be doing that in the first place.

I don't like sitting in the ER with my sick daughter far longer than I need to because so many people have to use the ER as their primary care doc.

All this massive inefficiency is costing me money.
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So er..ummm you want to take that massive inefficiency and make it more massive and think that's going to lower your costs? It's an interesting theory you have that more bureaucratic corruption and inefficiency is the cure for costs primarily caused by bureaucratic corruption and inefficiency, personally I don't think it's going to work.

For my money I'll go with the system that has proven to be the most efficient delivery mechanism for goods and services in the history of mankind, it's called the free market, perhaps you've heard of it?

Inefficiency? Compared to seven different systems that don’t communicate with each other, which is what we had before and after Obamacare?

I got pretty specific there. Seven different payment systems creates massive inefficiencies and massive inequities.

The Medicare/Supplement/Advantage system blends public and private resources far more efficiently than the mess we have now, maintains robust private market competition and innovation, maintains free market choice, completely eliminates the bloated Medicaid and VA programs and their costs, keeps costs down via better prevention and earlier diagnoses, and takes a huge monkey off the back of American Business. Aren’t those all good things?

I think we have people on both ends of the spectrum who dismiss it out of hand because it doesn't fit their rigid ideology, and that those people are putting politics ahead of what's best for the country.

And that's precisely what keeps us in this insane, seven-headed beast of a "health care system" in the first place.

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[Mac1958]

I'm curious what a true "free market" health care system would actually look like, so please contribute:

Free Market Health Care | US Message Board - Political Discussion Forum
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