Health Care (prompted by The Ferrett)

[wyrrlen]

I made the following comment to theferrett earlier today:

I think your premise is right, but I'd rather you went with a different conclusion to your argument. Namely, we already have bureaucrats now, so Let's work to remove bureaucrats from our health care! I often have said that I'm a supporter of single-payer insurance, but the more I look at it, the more I

Comments

[greyseal]

Too bad Dems are looking to limit HSAs now. Too much freedom, I guess.

[wyrrlen]

The argument I've heard is that its not insurance, and therefore potential insureds that would be low cost while high revenue are taken out of the insurance system's grasp. The secondary argument I've heard to this is that its believed that people pocket the money and forgo preventative medicine. As far as I can tell from the studies done on HSA effectiveness, the secondary argument is completely baloney.

Either way, people that have HSAs still have to purchase a catastrophic plan, so it is insurance. ...and I think people should have the right to opt out of insurance coverage (and this is well, the best I can come up with to give people freedom of choice but still keep some revenue in the system to pay for high cost insured members) up to the point where opting out crumbles the system due to lack of revenue. Of course, I guess I'm just adding to my original post in your comment here, because I don't think you disagree or don't know about these issues with HSAs. Sorry about that.

[greyseal]

No, I know about the problems people have with HSAs, and insofar as that runs counter to the notion of community rating, I can see why liberal types like that sort of thing. Personally, I think HSAs should be expanded; it's a great choice for the young with better health and less ready cash.

[melvin_udall]

Run for office. Seriously.

Having you among the Democrats would be a huge boon to the country.

I think we have to bring in Tort reform as just an opener - that's the mandatory barrier to starting universal health care.

This can't be said enough. Any reform without tort reform is nothing but an expansion of government and must make matters worse.

I'm not on board with making them nonprofits for a couple of reasons. Mainly profit generation isn't inherently bad. The introduction of real competition should eliminate some of the problems you see.

But I truly wish there were any in the majority party inside the beltway saying anything like this.