Socialized Health Care in the USA

[kandrathe]

Is that it? As soon as some disease has a personal responsibility issue, that invalidates the public option? What about the opposite argument, which strikes me as much stronger: most disease is *not* self-inflicted, and yet people suffer from it anyway. Often, they're even inflicted by other people. For instance, the anti-vax crowd is slowly wearing away at herd immunity. If child A catches a crippling disease because child B's parents refused to vaccinate, who pays for that, how much, and why?

Ultimately, all illness is personal. You find that X happened and now you face seeking and getting medical treatment to improve your quality of life. So, not to be cruel about it, but if my neighbor decides to sleep around and ends up with HIV, should it be me that pays for his treatment? Ok, so if it wouldn't be fair for me personally to get the bill, then why is it fair for us collectively to get the bill? So yes, the opposite. Someone has H1N1 virus and decides to travel on the airplane anyway, or some new immigrants bring tuberculosis back into the US. How is this any different that living in society from the beginning of time? People are constantly infecting other people with communicable diseases. Which is why public health officials have the power to quarantine people and places.

If we leave it to the insurance company actuaries, it'll all just be down to statistics: if you belong to a high-risk group, for whatever reason, you're going to pay out the nose, whether it's totally your fault, partially your fault, or not your fault at all.

Right, but this is why for health insurance we don't treat it like automobile insurance. Insurer's aggregate the risk across a the domain of policy holders, so that if everybody pays an averaged rate which from the insurance company point of view should cover health care outlays, administrative overhead and profits. Competition will assure us that companies provide quality service, efficient administration, and the minimum acceptable profit.

Cover everyone equally, and you gain fairness and simplicity. Whatever the illness, whatever your situation, you have access to quality medical care without negotiation or worry. In pretty much all countries that have such systems they are very popular, which is certainly more than can be said about the current US system. They also cost a whole lot less.

Right, but you do this with reducing choices and by imposing a system of rationing care. Also, I might be wrong, but aren't all these nationalized health care systems bankrupting your nations budgets? Are any of them not in red ink? In the US, Medicare and Medicaid (the already nationalized health care plans) account for 50% of all health care spending and are already bankrupt.

As for healthy eating and exercise, surely the government has no business whatsoever telling me what I can eat and how I spend my leisure time?

I agree, but, rather than drive the bus of "health insurance reform", how about we figure out why the demand for health care exceeds capacity driving up the costs.

So to summarize what I think the government should do;

1) Advocate wellness, just like JFK did - less demand for health care will lower costs
2) Remove laws that limit competition, and add oversight to prevent conflicts of interest.
3) Allow people to insure themselves for basic wellness with tax free health care savings accounts
4) Remove incentives for employers being the provider of health care plans -- add incentives for employers contributing to the employees HCSA (like they do with 401K).
5) Move to a model of focus on catastrophic health insurance. All the other comprehensive things can be add ons.