Then why didn't you accept my calling it that? Just in the mood to argue? <g>
We were talking about government involvement with medical care and/or insurance in general. There still is plenty of private insurance and privately played medical care, and no near term prospect for that changing, so you don't have a situation with "no market outside the central payer".
Your example wasn't so clearly such an example, a lot can be funded out of a communally funded pot without eliminating any funding outside the pot. We have enough in the pot now to need measures demand or reduce the cost, without turning efforts to reduce what's spent in to price controls. Even with Medicare, where the government does dominate the market, and so certain aspects of Medicare could start to approach that, but it isn't actually illegal for seniors to pay for health care outside of Medicare, even if the government makes it more difficult for the transaction to take place), there is a market for private health care even for seniors; not so much for private health insurance, except Medi-gap plans, but if that was your point where moving from talking about Medical Care, to just care for seniors, to the payment for care by insurance plans for seniors), your comment was more general, I might not call the situation here price controls myself, but I wouldn't have objected if you specifically called Medicare rules price controls for payments from insurance for medical care from seniors, but you where hardly that specific, many other possible systems could fit your description without requiring or involving a near total government take over. |
