[quote=CA renter]This is an excellent piece about some of the problems with Obamacare.
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“I’m afraid almost all discussions on the left and right regarding the Affordable Care Act (ACA) miss some very basic things. So I hope this email will explain a few economic ideas and put them into perspective for you, whether you’re on the left or right and whether you like Obamacare or not.
Before I do that, though, let me say that I’m a raging capitalist and I’m in favor of universal healthcare coverage. I’m indifferent as to having either (1) a 100% government-guaranteed single-payer system or (2) a 100% private solution where the government guarantees that the poor are fully covered. Each has its pros and cons. For countries like Spain and the UK, a single-payer national system works. (I’ve lived in both countries almost all my life, and their healthcare systems work. The only time I’ve ever paid $250 for an aspirin was in a US hospital.) On the other hand, private solutions work very well for Singapore and Switzerland. So one model is purely public, and it works; and the other is purely private, and it works. There is a lot of demand for healthcare, so you have to ration medical care via price or quantity. That’s basic economics. It is for voters and politicians to decide what they prefer. I’m indifferent to the solution, as long as it is well thought out and implemented and in fact provides universal coverage. The problem is that the ACA takes the worst elements of public and private and fails to provide universal coverage for millions of people.”
This country’s political divide is so f’d up that unfortunately it will likely take another ten years and getting to the edge of the demographic time bomb before anyone is willing to do anything of substance.
Part of the problem is most Americans are so shielded from the outside world that they have zero international prospective on things. That’s how they are able to fall in line with the complete b.s. that single payer equals communism. Never mind that the two countries that are the most Pro-American and most anti-communist in the world, when they came of age economically, choose single payer and are now ahead of the US in life expectancy yet at just 30 percent of our cost.
