Hood: We’re sliding towards single payer
Republican leaders resisted expansion for years, arguing that the promise of permanent 90% funding from
That said,
Many progressives, by contrast, see this new Medicaid expansion as merely another step to their ultimate goal of a single-payer system. The next steps will be to lower the eligibility age for Medicare, for example, and to expand Medicaid coverage for long-term care.
In my view, we've spent the past two decades sliding down the slippery slope to Medicare/Medicaid for all. It's time for conservatives to put on our spiked shoes and try to find a stopping place before it's too late.
That means articulating a clear, attractive, practical alternative that preserves the maximum amount of choice, competition, private innovation, personal responsibility, and fiscal restraint. Fortunately, we don't have to invent such a system from whole cloth. We can learn from the best practices of other countries.
Contrary to popular belief, single-payer systems aren't standard among other industrialized countries. Many rely on a combination of government and private health care arrangements to extend universal access to basic medical services. Some of these systems are arguably more pro-market and less heavily subsidized than ours is.
"Private insurance systems empower patient choice, and create room for insurers to organically evolve their benefit designs without having to wait for politicians or regulators to act," the FREOPP scholars write. "In addition, universal private systems tend to be more fiscally sustainable, because countries can means-test their subsidies and phase them out as one ascends the income scale."
So, whether you agree or disagree with the
If we don't, the slope towards a single-payer system will only get slipperier.
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