Say Anything Blog

The short answer is “no.”  But Ezra Klein makes that argument pointing out that the vast majority of Americans are already on health care plans that are heavily managed by employers and/or insurance companies.

By last year, only 7 percent of American workers were in “traditional” indemnity health plans, while the rest of us—or at least those of us fortunate enough to have insurance—were swimming in the alphabet soup of HMOs and PPOs and HDHPs.

Mike Adamson on the reader blog comments further:

A common objection to public healthcare is the creation of and intrusion by a bureaucracy into an individual’s plan of care. Why should the government tell me and my doctor what type of care is appropriate? If Klein’s 7% figure is accurate or even in the ballpark, then why would it be better for me to have my healthcare rationed by insurance companies rather than the government?

Obviously, being managed by private companies is better than the government.  Because we at least have a chance to opt-out of any given insurance plan.

I don’t have to go with my employer’s health insurance.  I could go out on my own and self-insure in various ways, including a health savings account.  That many people do choose to be on something like a HMO isn’t exactly an argument in favor of government health care.

The key is choice, and in a gov. health care system there is no choice.

Now, I’ll admit that America’s current way of doing health care is far from perfect.  Given the high costs of insurance and health care most people have to have a lot of money to have health care choice.  That’s unfortunate.  But instead of going to a government system, where we have no choice, we should seek to empower individuals to pay for their own health care so that the net result is more choice.

And we could do that by getting the government to stop its interference in the health care/health insurance markets that are causing so many problems.  Like ending insurance mandates, for instance, and essentially subsidizing employer health care by exempting premium payments from taxes.

Ezra Klein seems to think that the solution to rationed care in the private health care market is rationed care in a government health care system.  That’s a little foolish.  The solution, I think, is creating more choice.  And we can do that by having less government in health care, not more.