The Wall Street Journal has a good quote on what Americans say they want for healthcare and what has to happen for that to happen:
Cheap insurance means either very little gets covered or the people who need a lot of coverage can’t get insured. Covering sick people means either massive subsidies (public or private) from the healthy to the sick and restricting the size of those subsidies means limiting choices. Democrats got hammered for choosing to cover sick people via either Medicaid expansion or through subsidized private sector insurance with a coercive participation mechanism. Republicans will get hammered for telling people to go die quietly in the corner and here’s a tax deduction that only matters if you’re healthy and wealthy.
This is the core problem of health policy. There are no pure win-win solutions for the healthy and the sick at the same time.
Dreaming of impossible dreams and guaranteed disappointmentPost + Comments (107)