Comment by ratelimitsteve
4 hours ago
is it humane to solve that problem by excluding people based on income? that's what your proposing, as that's how markets solve problems like this: if more people need a product/service than the market can provide prices go up and the poor are excluded. also not trying to be snarky but that's the choice in front of us. part of the problem with free market solutions to healthcare is the feasibility of walking away from a bad deal. in every other space prices are regulated downward by the buyers' ability to either buy something else or do without but there is no doing without emergency care and doing without preventive care is just deferring the cost until it's emergency care at punitive interest.
Stop lying, I haven't proposed anything of the kind. Free market solutions often include giving cash subsidies to certain participants (and you would be aware of this if you had bothered to do even basic research on serious healthcare system reform proposals before commenting). I'm simply pointing out that it's a complex problem with multiple causes and there is no simple solution.
Even cash subsidies can be a kind of chain. Why wouldn't we just subsidize the whole thing for everyone then? And if the purpose of a health insurance plan is to collect groups of people into "risk pools," then why wouldn't we just put everyone in a global risk pool? And if the purpose of a health insurance plan is to negotiate rates on behalf of a bunch of people, why wouldn't we have someone like CMS determine those rates? And if the purpose of a health insurance plan is to make sure everyone has health care, why would we create a system where people are excluded by means-testing?
They're not lying any more than you were when you responded to my suggestion that we should prioritize what's humane with some sort of interpretation that I was saying something about politicians.