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Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (2030)	9/6/2007 3:31:24 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

I'm not really opposing a free market solution. I don't oppose either employer provided insurance or a great reduction in employer provided insurance. What I oppose is the tax system favoring employee provided insurance over other forms of compensation. You remove that tilting of the playing field and employee provided health insurance will be much less of an issue, both because it won't be as common and because to get it people will have to forgo a larger amount of other forms of compensation, so they will feel/notice the cost more. Even if you remove all of the tax benefit and any other way the government favors this method of insurance, it would take time for any serious shift, as you point out people are used to it, but they used to be used to getting most of their compensation in cash (counting checks as cash, or if you go back long enough even if you don't count checks as cash), and that expectation changed over time. I'm not looking for any quick fix. I don't think there is one, and IMO pushing to hard to get one will probably be counterproductive.

To: Road Walker who wrote (2030)	9/7/2007 9:31:33 AM
From: Joe NYC	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 42652

John, I think you are both right. On one hand there is the market for insurance, and I agree with John that individuals shopping for their own insurance (that fits their needs as far as deductible, procedures covered) would bring more market discipline, and also, I think Tim is right about consumers shopping themselves for health care services at acceptable prices (so that they can save on the deductible part) would bring some market discipline there. Now, what sucks is that most of the health insurance companies don't cover alternative doctors / treatments, where I believe the direction of medicine should go - away from heavy reliance on prescription drugs and invasive procedures. I think a catastrophic insurance with high deductible, with consumer free to spend his deductible portion any way he pleases would be one way to bring alternative medicine from only very wealthy to majority of people. I am afraid that the national insurance would only tighten the grip of the medical establishment, and would shut down the avenues to alternative treatments. Joe