Seven years ago I wrote a
blog entry about Obamacare. It
basically expressed a feeling - that the system in Europe, problematic as it
is, at least gives one the feeling of security when it comes to healthcare. If
you get ill, you go to the Doctor’s, period.
There is never any question of not being treated.
Now Obamacare has been tested I think it was an improvement on the previous situation, with about 10 million more insures, I believe, but we could, eventually, aim to replace it. Thinking
about things, in an idealistic world, the ‘individual mandate’ would indeed not
exist. That is, one should really be able
to opt out of buying health insurance if one wishes. People should have the
right to take a big, maybe stupid, risk, keep their insurance premium money, and not pay health
insurance, even if they can afford it; just as they have the right to not
insure against damage of their own car.
Now, the problem is, that if that right - to not buy
insurance - is going to be given, for it to work you really have to not treat someone who is sick or
injured, could afford insurance but decided not to pay for it, and doesn't have the money to pay for their treatment. You really have
to leave them to their own devices, and even, if necessary, to die. And that's, of
course, not what happens, even in the bad old USA. Emergency rooms always treat patients; it’s basic compassion. And thus, a large
part of the motivation for getting insurance in the first place disappears, and
on top of this we get the consequences of enormous
unpaid costs, medical bankruptcy nonsense etc.
So the USA really needs to decide. Either you make insurance
compulsory, as does the rest of the first world, or you don't treat people who
don't get it. Having it both ways
doesn't work. Either we have the individual mandate or dispassionately insist
on no treatment for the uninsured. The US individual mandate, as in Europe, works better than the pre-Obamacare zoo.
However, although I know of no precedent, the insurance-or-no-treatment model
could conceivably work better, while
giving people more freedom of choice. What you’d find, maybe, is that, the
extra motivation might even lead to an even larger proportion of people getting
insurance, and voluntarily, than they do under Obamacare. But it would be scary
as hell. So guys, keep the individual mandate for now, but work to building a
system where it is no longer necessary i.e.,
where health costs are so low that everyone voluntarily buys insurance
anyway. This requires bringing bring costs down, through increasing
flexibility, introducing cross-state and international competition, dissociating
insurance from employment, tort reform, preventive care incentives, analytics,
targeted therapies, innovation etc. But
that discussion, as they say, is another kettle of fish.
