I'd think that if the consumer can't afford the care or taxpayers can't fund Medicare the rest is moot.
Being as how the consumers are the taxpayers, then neither the pre-HCB "system" nor the impending "HCB" system (fixed or not), are a "solution" to costs. At least the pre-HCB system had more of a relation to market forces, and would have even more with less regulation.
Before Medicare, 1/2 of seniors didn't have any health coverage. I
think there's a reasonable argument to be made that the States alone either can't or don't want to address the issues. Sure, we could do what Rand says and just let the sick ones die, but the taxpayers would still have to clean up the bodies.
Before medicare health costs were much lower.
As for the Economist, they had a good article some time ago stating exactly that. I thought you'd appreciate another sovereign nations perspective
Wha . . .? All nations are sovereign. Our nation has levels of sovereignty. The individual being the most sovereign. Well . . . it sort of used to be that way.
Good to agree we don't think polls are necessary on the subject. I think the average person can see the yearly increases in their contributions to coverage and reductions in services, if they actually have it in the first place.
So far, though the average person bitched about the rising costs, he was able to pay. There certainly have arisen many market options (cadillac plans, cheaper ones, medical savings, catastrophic insurance, etc.) to lower the cost. Wasn't the impetus for the HCB to cover the so-called uninsured. It doesn't, other than fictitious projections which we know are most always over-optimistic, seem to have lowered the price.
I believe the CBO did estimate cost reductions of 7-10% long-term, primarily to Medicare. While perhaps the benefits of tort reform are over-estimated, I think this would be an easy savings. Interstate competition and ending the price fixing on prescription drugs would also help, but good luck getting them passed. Reducing fraud would be a big savings buy might require more government oversight (certainly centralized records) that many oppose.
Yeah, there a lot of "solutions" but Federal mandate is not even legal, never mind more expensive to our debt problem.
The crazy thing is how much more the US spends on health care per person (40% or so?) than other developed nations and how little we're getting for that extra investment. I don't really see how just regulating less will address this issue in a meaningful way. Increasing competition might certainly lower costs but also bears the risk of reducing quality of service below existing standards...and then you're back to more regulation.
Others see how over-regulating was the problem
I've seen proposals that believe that if health care providers were paid on total treatment rather than individual treatments doctors would have an incentive to administer less unnecessary medications and tests.
The bottom line is that more action is needed to continue to reform the system. I'd prefer a combination of the best ideas where complimentary, but the reality is nobody has the perfect solution...at least not that I've seen.
-spence