HockeyDad wrote:What would work is single payer Medicare for all, cradle to grave.
How? At what cost per person and how would those funds be raised? And at what availability of care (wait time, treatment protocols, level of care per person)?
At some point this discussion is a canard and the real discussion is "health" and "health care" as construed in modern western society is a commodity and the rules of commodoties apply:
There is an upward limit of available supply
There are costs developing this supply and getting it to "market" (in this case us as functioning humans)
Either the free market sets this cost through competition or the government does through regulation
Rational persons will either pay this cost or adapt to doing without, including accept penalty (financial or physcial)
I know that seems heartless as friends are caught up in this (one is a former MLB All-Star dying of prostrate cancer and wondering how to afford drugs) but on a macro level the facts are someone will have to pay for health care-either the individual, an insurance company that pools risk, charitable organizations (they used to run hospitcals) or the government.
Oh wait, I'm sorry I'm remembering economics classes. Remember those? They don't teach them anymore unless you specifically take b-school classes IN COLLEGE. Used to be a high school course.....