Single Payer Madness

Dear Single Payer Revolutionaries,

You want more private health insurance. You don't want to destroy the industry and hand it over to government. That would be foolish and you're no fool.  Yes, hospitals make money, health insurance companies make money, doctors make money and that's the way we want it. There job is to fix your broken ass as quickly and painlessly as possible. The one that does the best job most quickly is the rarest which makes their service worth more. They make more money and you are healthy and happy. That doesn't seem so evil. You want them staying up nights figuring out how to get the job done even faster and cheaper. When doctors, hospitals and insurance companies have no reason to come up with the next time saving whiz-bang procedure how is it we benefit?

Your activism is still vital, though. You just need to change the verbage. The government can help us out of this jam by changing the tax rules that give breaks to corporations to provide health care to their employees and give the breaks directly to us. Not everyone works for a company that provides health insurance but everyone with a job pays federal income tax. Look at the federal withholding on your next pay stub. If Uncle Sam let you keep half of that every week could you find health insurance? What if half were set aside explicitly for your health insurance that you had to buy from any number of private plans and if you found a good deal you got to keep the difference? Private insurers would suddenly pay attention to you with the best product at the lowest price. Look at us, we just solved the health care crisis and drove down prices at the same time.

There can even be some "regulation" in this model. Congress will have to pass laws either way and it won't hurt this market if private companies are forced to cover anyone who asks irrespective of their ability to pay. Obviously, it will raise prices for everyone but that's how the cookie crumbles. Maybe the government throws in a subsidy, whatever. Everyone shares that burden this way or that. It's not a good compromise unless everyone suffers a little.