Now how about a RATIONAL system like Single Payer in which the government does NOT provide healthcare, they just provide the $$$ to healthcare.
In the many nations it has been successful in their per capita cost for healthcare can be as much as HALF of ours. It also eliminates unnecessary brureaucracies and middlemen taking a portion of the money.
Overall it looks a hell of a lot better than our systems.
Doesn't work.
At this point I'd suggest this alternative:
The government provides a universal health insurance plan with a say, $10,000 to $20,000 deductible per year. It is designed for catastrophic healthcare that most people won't use. It's for worst case scenarios. This plan is tax funded.
For everything else, people can get a pre-tax healthcare 'savings' account. All healthcare expenses are 100% tax deductible. For employers, they can set up such an account for each employee and provide matching funds to what the employee puts in. At the end of each year, the employer and employee split 50-50 all remaining funds in the account. There would be a cap on matching funds. This means the employee and employer can roll over the remaining funds or take them as extra income (taxed) at the end of each year. Employees can also have their own private account as well.
The account cap is around the same as the deductible for the government provided catastrophic plan.
For persons on government assistance, they have a mandatory requirement to have a private healthcare account. Things like Earned Income Credit, tax refunds, and other such payouts go into this account until it reaches the maximum amount allowed. That is, persons on welfare are expected to have saved their money towards their healthcare costs.
As for payouts, these are done directly to providers by the individual. That means market forces are now at work to drive down costs along with getting rid of the insurance middlemen, etc.
This means that all routine healthcare is market driven and the cost is forced down by it being pre-tax money and eliminating middlemen and the bureaucracy that goes with it. For something catastrophic, you are at most out that major deductible with everything else being covered. That means for most people if you can't pay immediately, you can pay your medical bills off in a reasonable time period.
We need to get back to a market driven routine medical care model, not more government.
