So I think the answer is that some level of education ought to be taxpayer funded (though not necessarily government-distributed), but parents should always remain free to supplement that as they are able and deem it appropriate.
Thanks. What got me thinking about this is what could turn out to be a parallel with the situation in the health care system, that is, over time, the choice to supplement could be lost.
I have a doctor who is not part of the "system," that is, she does not accept public or private insurance. I see her, my Blue Cross pays me part of her bill, and I pay the rest. This is much like the situation you describe with vouchers.
I'm not too far from Medicare so I've started thinking about how this will play out when I'm that age. I have not fully investigated all the options, but this is my understanding.
The reason some doctors, like mine, and patients are opting out of the systems is the result of regulation of payments. Over time, some people saw that the rich were supplementing reimbursement and deemed that unfair to the poor, who ended up with lower quality medical service. To counter that unfairness, the law established that a doctor who accepts Medicare payments must settle in full for that amount and not accept additional payments from the patient. So, if I were under Medicare and I went to a doctor who accepted Medicare reimbursements from any other patient, that doctor could not accept a supplement to the Medicare reimbursement from me. The only way a doctor can get a payment greater than the Medicare reimbursement table provides is to not take any Medicare patients at all, which is what my doctor does. At such time as I reach Medicare age, I will either have to pay my doctor's charges in full or change doctors to one who takes Medicare patients because Blue Cross will not pay the portion of the bill that would be covered by Medicare. It seems that Blue Cross won't let me just not sign up for Medicare while they continue to make the payments they make now. Hope I explained that clearly.
If vouchers follow that pattern and society deems it unfair for some students to supplement the voucher amount as they did for medical payments, it could happen that private schools end up having to turn away all voucher holders and accept only students who will pay the full bill or limit their charges to the amount of the voucher. We might not be able to have schools with mixed economic classes where the poor voucher student pays the voucher amount and the well off student supplements the voucher payment and we still end up with rich schools and poor schools. Or the same kind of school system as our current medical system under HMO's.
I wonder if the voucher advocates have thought this one through all the way. The similarity between publicly funded medical and educational systems is strong. They have similar fairness and cost issues. |
