On Elizabeth Edwards and Health Care Mandates
Elizabeth Edwards has gotten a lot of notice recently for her high-profile writing on the topic of health care mandates; the press short-hands it as “Elizabeth backs Hillary’s plan” or some such. I don’t know if there’s an endorsement in the cards (I doubt it, but who knows?).
I will say this: I just don’t like health care mandates. Yes, mandates work with car insurance but people get tickets and have their license taken away if they are scofflaws. I don’t know of a similar set of penalties that could or would work for health care. Besides, maybe it just is what it is: people love cars more than they love…people. I dunno.
Anyway, I’m skeptical of mandates. I don’t think it’ll work and I think the so-called subsidies for those who can’t afford the premiums won’t nearly be enough. Massachusetts’ subsidy fund is massively in the red — and that’s with only 7% compliance with the mandates. That’s not good.
Then there’s the whole problem of insurance versus care. As Michael Moore correctly points out, just because you’re insured doesn’t mean you get the care you need — not from a for-profit insurance company anyway.
Eugene says it best, at the end of a great analysis of Edwards’ plan:
If Elizabeth can reconfigure her thinking on health care, and come to see … that we need to guarantee affordable access to health care to everyone – then she will be on the right path. And it won’t be a path that involves mandated insurance.
What do you think?
You know what I think. Insurance-based healthcare is part of the problem with the system. It appears that everyone has given up on solving it. And government’s job is to tax, not force you to buy shit. They should make the healthcare Senators, Congressmen and federal employees have available to everyone and pay for it with a progressive tax. But what do I and all of the other industrialized nations on earth know.