Universal health care

[The Duke]

A national health care voucher that is large enough to pay for basic insurance should be available, funded by the government.

If you want to upgrade, you can do so out of pocket.

Having an insurance system where only those who are at risk of needing care buy insurance is insane.  Anyone who advocates this doesn't fully grasp the idea behind insurance.

Asking businesses to pick up the tab is equally insane.  Look at GM, you'll see that company provided benefits will never be as stable as they should be.  We have a masive welfare state provided by corporations to their employees, yet we pretend to have a free health care market.

Want to know why Europe, with all its torubles, is stil leconomically competitive with us?  One reason is they don't push companies to provide the benefits government should be providing.  They let companies, you know, make money instead.

Pretending that tax increases to fund this would cost the average person more than they pay anyway in premiums is willful delusion.

[The Duke]

People keep saying the government is incomeptent in delivering goods, but today most people get health care from corporations, which are ill suited to the task and have proven incapable of delivering adequate health care.

Why all this animosity towards government when the greatest failures of our current sysytem are that we've asked corporations to provide for people's health care and corporation by their nature have proven incapable of doing the job?  By all rights, they never should have been asked to provide helath care, they're not built to do that, they're built to turn a profit, it makes no sense to have this massive private sector welfare state as the recent collapse of GM demonstrates.

A national, universal, health care voucher would allow us to keep the management of health care in the private sector without burdening businesses with the role of nanny state and it would provide universal insurance which is the only effective kind of insurance.  It preserves the free market while still ensuring a basic safety net for everyone.

[The Duke]

States,

I think the voucher's value should be based on age.  If someone wants to be unhealthy the voucher might not cover the quality of care that person wants.  They'd have to augment the voucher out of pocket.  That seems fair to me, that they pay the cost of their own behavior.

David,

The objection you raise is, I think, a political one and not so much a policy one.  In any health care system, there will always be people whose goal is not to provide a safety net, but to provide a cradle-to-grave luxury/welfare state.  They will always use sad stories to justify higher and higher expenditures.

We just have to find politicians responsible enough to say "no".  Every once in a while, they actually come along.

[The Duke]

States,

I think the voucher's value should be based on age.  If someone wants to be unhealthy the voucher might not cover the quality of care that person wants.  They'd have to augment the voucher out of pocket.  That seems fair to me, that they pay the cost of their own behavior.

So this person would still have to pay the same amount of tax money for the program and recieve less coverage?

The value of the voucher should be the same, but it may no get you as far if you don't take care of yourself.

So this person would still have to pay the same amount of tax money for the program and recieve less coverage?