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02/21/10(Sun)20:37 No.195615>>195401
>It has several times higher price because
over-regulation and government programs messing with insurance has
created a bizarre bastard child of Capitalism and Socialism that works
horribly.
This. The debate on the nationalization of the
American healthcare system isn't a debate between free markets and
socialism, it's a debate between a bloated, inefficient government
regulated and subsidized industry and a more streamlined industry
controlled by the government completely. Unfortunately there seems to be
little recognition of this, either by the left wing (which is to be
expected) or by the right wing (which is a little less expected; not
much, though). The best route for healthcare reform is to ween the
insurance companies off of things like tax breaks, government payments,
and mandated coverage, to replace mandatory licensure for doctors with
optional certification for doctors (and it would probably be a good idea
to put more oversight on the AMAs dictation over what the standards for
certification should be), do something similar with the regulation of
pharmaceuticals by the FDA, help reform tort law regarding malpractice
suits (not a huge issue, but something worth considering), crack down
harder on insurance companies who don't fulfil the terms of their
contract (this may require a little more government, but what good is
the government if it can't enforce contract law?), crack down harder on
patients who scam the system (this happens a hell of a lot,
unfortunately), stop incentivising the marriage of insurance with
employers and the use of full coverage insurance instead of insurance
for catastrophic injury, and perhaps the most important - and the most
difficult - reform the general economy in such a manner that decent
coverage is more widely available. The healthcare system has a lot of
problems, but some of the issue is simply the prevalence of poverty, and
reform on nothing but the healthcare system won't be enough to fix
everything. |
