I do think government regulation (in particular, the tax benefit for companies providing insurance) have made the situation far worse than it needs to be.
In the end, it's an incredibly complex problem that should not be handled in at the Federal level
Then you are arguing on the wrong side.
You are like the Republican Party. You argue that one thing is practical, but another thing is moral. You cede the moral high ground to the other party. Ironic, since the moral high ground ought to be yours.
How do you "not cover" the result of a procedure that impacted every aspect of my life while covering everything else
If it's that important, why don't you just pay for it? Why do you point a gun at me and force me to pay for your procedure? If our medical system were free, it would be as efficient as the veterinary system, and the cost reduction would be commensurate. So, you see, the moral is the practical.
Naked capitalism and healthcare can't work together
Neither can capitalism and clothing, consumer electronics, toothpaste, food, transportation. I mean, everywhere we have tried capitalism, it has failed. Everywhere we have tried socialization and regulation, it has worked. Why don't we apply the model of the Soviet Union to our healthcare system? That is obviously a pro-healthy choice. </friendly_sarcasm>
I'm not "arguing on the wrong side". When you have 300 million people, you have a choice: rule by fiat or slice things into smaller pieces, because 300M people are never going to agree. State populations, on the other hand, are much more closely aligned, making an intractable problem at the federal level tractable at the state level (like many other problems). I'll get back to the government regulation in a minute, but first...
I'm not asking "you" to cover my procedure. I'm asking to be allowed into a shared risk pool at any cost due to having had a procedure. Regardless, when you buy into a shared risk pool, guess what, you have to share the risk. You can't say "I'm not sick, so I shouldn't have to pay for sick people." Your option is to buy in or not. As a personal insurance companies have smiled upon, a person has their choice to not buy in or not; for those of us they frown at, we don't have choice to buy in (short of being part of a corporate plan).
And that gets back to where the regulation has caused problems: it's set the entire industry up to have insurance companies be the customers of medical care instead of individuals, leading to all kinds of weird incentives.
For healthy people and relatively rich people, naked capitalism would be fine for healthcare. However, government is (well, should be;) about more than just building roads and bombers. It should be an embodiment of a shared responsibility we have to each other. I put reasonable[1] levels of healthcare in that shared responsibility.
I think a single-payer system, especially in the US, would fail horribly. I think we need more competition and not less. I think, most importantly, the customer for medical care (ie the person who ultimately sees the bill) should be the individual (failure of any price consciousness is another part of what got us into this situation).
But I also think everybody should have access to good quality care at prices they can afford. Today, there is an entire middle-class (not "The Middle-class") that makes too much for medicaid and too little for insurance that are just screwed. Have cancer? Too bad if you want to fight it, because one dose of the medication costs more than you make in a day. That is just inhumane and pure capitalism doesn't care. So the alternative is to quit your job so you can qualify for medicaid, but even that sucks (for bureaucratic, lack of competition, and lack of price sensitivity reasons) and is worse for the patient and our economy both.
So I believe capitalism plays a very important role in this, but I don't think, by itself, it can solve it. My perspective on this shifted a lot after going to work for myself and not being able to provide healthcare for my children after my COBRA ran out.
1. Being kept alive for years on a ventilator is nowhere near reasonable.
In the end, it's an incredibly complex problem that should not be handled in at the Federal level
Then you are arguing on the wrong side.
You are like the Republican Party. You argue that one thing is practical, but another thing is moral. You cede the moral high ground to the other party. Ironic, since the moral high ground ought to be yours.
How do you "not cover" the result of a procedure that impacted every aspect of my life while covering everything else
If it's that important, why don't you just pay for it? Why do you point a gun at me and force me to pay for your procedure? If our medical system were free, it would be as efficient as the veterinary system, and the cost reduction would be commensurate. So, you see, the moral is the practical.
Naked capitalism and healthcare can't work together
Neither can capitalism and clothing, consumer electronics, toothpaste, food, transportation. I mean, everywhere we have tried capitalism, it has failed. Everywhere we have tried socialization and regulation, it has worked. Why don't we apply the model of the Soviet Union to our healthcare system? That is obviously a pro-healthy choice. </friendly_sarcasm>