Is government-backed health insurance necessarily a bad thing? I mean, in and of itself... I'm not talking about government-subsidized or fully government-funded - I'm talking about an insurance bloc as administered by the government. Is this a bad thing?
Because up until this point, the grand plan has been to create this weak mandate that everyone buy insurance along with some sort of plan that the government will subsidize certain people up to a certain extent of poverty. I really don't understand what the difference is between doing that and taking Medicare, Medicaid, Government Employee Health Insurance and VA Medical and welding it into a single negotiating bloc and then offering insurance at-cost to whomever else wants it.
Because, honestly, if it sucks, people will buy insurance elsewhere.
Yes, I know, this puts the already-monopolistic health insurers at a disadvantage because they will have to savage their margins. Let's assume for a minute that I don't care about that (because, really, does anyone feel bad for insurers?) and ask if there's an actual downside here in terms of the tax-payers.
Let's reiterate: I don't want to spend a dime more on subsidies than is already being spent, but we can keep spending all of the money we're currently spending. All we're doing here is offering to let people buy into the negotiating bloc of the already-massive US Government Health Insurance without adding to the amount that the Government is spending.
Is there a hidden evil here that I'm just not seeing?
Posted by Vengeful Cynic at October 28, 2009 11:27 PM | TrackBack