Uncovering the Over-Insured Why are the candidates ignoring the real health-care problem?
By John Graham
The conventional wisdom is that the number-one goal of health policy should be “universal” coverage: everybody should have health insurance. Few dare to challenge this trope, for two reasons.
First is the supposed disgrace that the U.S. is the only developed country that does not have universal coverage — the emotion-driven stock-in-trade of the Michael Moore crowd. Second is a prevailing narrative that portrays the uninsured delaying primary care until their illnesses worsen and they show up at emergency rooms for wildly expensive — but unpaid — treatment. This sticks hospitals with unpaid debts that they cover by shifting the costs to private insurers who then raise premiums.
On the left, Dennis Kucinich (and company) advocate a single-payer government monopoly as in Canada. They conveniently ignore that about three million Canadians have no access to a primary care physician, as well as the 2005 Canadian Supreme court decision that government monopoly health care violates human rights. From the right, former Governor Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger of California, and others advocate a more Swiss model of compulsory private insurance. Senator Hillary Clinton of New York has a hybrid approach: compulsory private insurance with the option of government benefits if one prefers!
The route to bipartisan, political success in health policy now consists of basically ordering the uninsured to become uninsured. The political appeal is obvious because employed people who have health insurance are probably not excited about paying higher premiums or taxes to provide their uninsured neighbors with health care. If you can convince them that they are already paying for it, proposing mandatory health insurance is a winner. There's just one problem.
