A lot of this was covered by the Libertarian Party's position on healthcare reform in the last election, which I thought was interesting: https://www.foxnews.co

A lot of this was covered by the Libertarian Party's position on healthcare reform in the last election, which I thought was interesting: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/jo-jorgensen-big-idea-market-based-health-care-system https://www.foxnews.com/politics/jo-jorgensen-big-idea-marke... There are probably ways that we could combine aspects of greater and lesser privatization to achieve the best of both worlds. I have some thoughts that I've been mulling around for a while: 1. Expand the government to achieve universal healthcare coverage. -- a. ACA public option. -- b. A conservative UBI, with the twist that uninsured individuals would be automatically enrolled in the public option and have their premiums taken out of their UBI. (Tangentially, for similar reasons, also pay out a portion of each UBI disbursement in the form of food stamps rather than cash.) 2. Shrink the government and quasi-public entities (insurance providers) to unshackle the invisible hand. -- a. New regulation to ban copays and set a mandatory floor on deductibles (say, $10k). While major emergencies still need to be covered, and while there still needs to be an entity in between the patient and provider eating the risk of non-payment, it's also desirable from an efficiency perspective for patients to be kept aware of the costs of their care — and therefore incentivized to select more cost-efficient options. The market would then naturally find a more reasonable equilibrium without the need for price fixing, in theory. -- b. Set up a system of tax deductions and credits for out-of-pocket medical costs. (Preferably such that the poorest would have their costs fully covered in most or all cases, depending on what's fiscally realistic.) This must strike a balance between non-disruption of market forces and ensuring that the poorest in society aren't shy about seeking the care they need. My thinking is that the annual nature of tax filings would be enough to address the former, as patients would still be be out of pocket for up to a year waiting on their refunds, representing an opportunity cost that would be difficult to ignore. To address the latter point, set up a standardized/regulated process for the insurer to send the patient something resembling a credit card bill, which they could pay either up front or up to a year later with accumulated interest. Parts 1 and 2 are essentially unrelated, and could hypothetically be implemented independently of each other. However, #1 on its own doesn't attempt to address the efficiency issue (thus saddling the government with even greater new expenditures), and #2 on its own doesn't address what happens or who gets left holding the bag when an uninsured patient can't pay their bill (which wouldn't be an issue with truly universal coverage). I also have a lot to say about what the state should and shouldn't be doing to maximize the general health/nutrition/fitness of the population, but we can leave that for another post :).