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

To: Lane3 who wrote (9612)	9/18/2009 2:35:50 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

It doesn't seem so inconsistent to me. Government decisions that either X will be covered, or that X will not be covered reduce freedom and can produce sub-optimal coverage choices. A requirement that every health insurance/payment plan sold cover a large and ever expanding laundry list of conditions, reduces freedom and reduces insurance coverage because it raises the cost beyond the level that a lot of people want to pay. Explicit government rationing of the strictest type (rationing of what can be paid for privately not just with government money) also reduces freedom and coverage. The much more likely form of rationing (restricting what the government will pay for), doesn't have to reduce freedom or even reduce coverage (as long as you can buy gap coverage), but if you get a government monopoly (either by design or through a subsidized "public option" run amok), it can do both. Even without a government take over of insurance, the ideas being tossed around include forcing people to buy insurance, while effectively inflating the costs for younger healthier people who apparently will not pay in just based on their own risks and coverage needs.