I've been thinking lately that half the US could opt out of public healthcare, the rest would subsidize them, and the per-capita cost on the payers would still be less than it is today through private insurance.
I am actually not opposed to some kind of national health program, but the supply problem (and therefore the price problem) needs to be addressed first. Partially socializing what we have today will only make things worse.
Proponents of national healthcare always say that it will lower costs, but unless the government seizes control of everything, doctor salaries, hospital employee pay, etc. cost will never go down.
I am not arguing that the government should do all that, in fact it would terrify me. But it should work to increase the supply of healthcare and to create efficiencies and price transparency to drive costs down. Once costs are manageable it will be easier to find a way to guarantee healthcare affordably without crippling the economy or having the government run everything.
Of course when a pragmatic approach like the above is offered you always run into the "my mom has cancer now" argument that we just need to do it as soon as possible. It is a hard argument to refute.
I tend to agree, thank you for your thoughtful points.
Another thought I've been having is that since medicine is the epitome of a good with inelastic demand, then the government could/should impose rather strict laws about profiteering. For example, maybe a drug could only cost double what a university can synthesize it for, or a minimum of 3 manufacturers would make any drug sold in the US (to ensure healthy competition), or the government could provide generic options for all drugs (as a price stabilizer), something like that. So insulin would essentially be free, and the hepatitis C cure might be substantially cheaper, for example.
I realize that this might lead to problems with drug research costs. But, that's really what we should really be talking about here. Separating research cost to some degree from profit in their distribution. And spreading those costs globally somehow so that they don't fall mostly on the US.
Maybe incremental measures like these could be adopted over a 5 or 10 year period until private insurance costs are more in line with the public option cost in other countries, and then states could offer insurance plans. Once about 50% have done that, the programs could be made federal. We could still keep private insurance for those who want it, like in many European countries.
To be honest, I am personally against these incremental approaches because I have doubts that they'll be adopted, but, you're right that it's a complex issue so I'm open to ideas and hope we can get past the political disfunction and get back to helping people.
