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Yes, if anyone understands the role of government as the insurer of last resort, it would be entrepreneurs. The single-payer option is exactly the kind of thing

Yes, if anyone understands the role of government as the insurer of last resort, it would be entrepreneurs. The single-payer option is exactly the kind of thing the government should do to cut health coasts costs and encourage economic growth. Private insurance companies can provide additional insurance. But the present system is designed to impose a huge negative externality on would-be entrepreneurs and others who might have left their jobs to pursue other opportunities. And you are subsidizing the profits of the industries that benefit from the relative immobility of labor. That negative externality you pay is someone else's subsidy. If it were up to me, I'd rather pay into a universal health care system than pay the negative externality to stay tied to an employer on account of health care coverage. Another negative externality is the administrative burden imposed on companies to handle employee health care.

orangecat 16y ago
Exactly this. Almost everyone of any political persuasion who has seriously considered the issue agrees that employer-based health insurance is a horrible system. Liberals want to replace it with single payer, I'd prefer a functioning individual market with a subsidized high risk pool for those who are uninsurable, but either would be better than the worst of both worlds that we have today.
- ChristianMarks 16y ago
  A subsidized high-risk pool probably amounts to the same thing, since almost anyone outside of a sufficiently large insurable group is practically uninsurable by definition. The mathematical necessity to maintain a large risk pool stubbornly resists ideological containment. I don't see why a for-profit entity would have any incentive to reallocate the subsidy that labor already provides to insurance companies (in the form of immobility, high startup costs and the cost of employer administration of health benefits) to pay for a minimal level of health insurance. It seems the government is better situated to provide some minimal level that would stimulate the kind of market for individual insurance that you refer to. I don't see such a market bootstrapping itself into existence--otherwise this already would have happened.

orangecat 16y ago

Exactly this. Almost everyone of any political persuasion who has seriously considered the issue agrees that employer-based health insurance is a horrible system. Liberals want to replace it with single payer, I'd prefer a functioning individual market with a subsidized high risk pool for those who are uninsurable, but either would be better than the worst of both worlds that we have today.

ChristianMarks 16y ago
A subsidized high-risk pool probably amounts to the same thing, since almost anyone outside of a sufficiently large insurable group is practically uninsurable by definition. The mathematical necessity to maintain a large risk pool stubbornly resists ideological containment. I don't see why a for-profit entity would have any incentive to reallocate the subsidy that labor already provides to insurance companies (in the form of immobility, high startup costs and the cost of employer administration of health benefits) to pay for a minimal level of health insurance. It seems the government is better situated to provide some minimal level that would stimulate the kind of market for individual insurance that you refer to. I don't see such a market bootstrapping itself into existence--otherwise this already would have happened.