Paul Krugman at the New York Times has written an informative essay about the need for universal healthcare. He suggests describing it at "Medicare for all." I prefer to call it "universal healthcare."
Whatever you call it, it is well over due. The monthly premiums for health insurance for my healthy family of four exceeded my monthly mortgage payment in the late 1980's. Self-employed Baptist ministers in moderate and small sized churches were among the first to be saddled with health insurance costs that exceeded their ability to pay.
Since that time the relentless rise in the cost of health insurance has priced more and more working people out of the market. Today more than 47 million people in our country have no health insurance and each year the number increases. Those who do have health insurance are now paying ever escalating premiums to cover the emergency healthcare expenses of the uninsured.
Our system of paying for healthcare is broken. It desperately needs to be fixed.
1 comment:
I'm not sure that bringing market forces to bear on costs is really a solution to the problems in the health care system. Fundamental to the efficacy of market forces on cost is the ability to not buy. If new cars are priced too high, consumers don't buy, and prices come down. If health care is priced too high, people die. Plus, do patients really want to change doctors to use a cheaper one? There are many reasons patients choose doctors, but I suspect that price is not high on the list.
But market forces might be able to make a difference in the health care insurance system; however, the problem here is that the consumer is not the purchaser. I don't get to shop around for health care insurance like I can for car insurance or life insurance, because to go outside the employer's options is cost-prohibitive. So I have little influence as a consumer over what is covered, how much it costs, deductible levels, etc.
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