Monday, November 4, 2013

Lessons of the Obamacare Mess: Public Is Better

This article talks about the benefits of a government run health care system

We could have extended Medicare to everyone. Or if that was politically unthinkable, we could have extended Medicare a few years at a time -- first to 60 year olds, then to 55 year olds, then to the young, and so on until everyone was covered.
I've been thinking a lot lately about why and how simpler is usually better. And when it comes to providing social goods, simpler usually means public -- not "public private partnerships" (where the private partner makes the profit and government eats the loss and the thing has too many moving parts) but true public systems.
The author supports an extension of Medicare because it enjoys wider political support and is less complex than Obama care to administer. A government health care system would also eliminate the need to supervise and monitor the private vendors, therefore cutting down costs. Do you think a government run health care system would be a better alternative to Obama care? 

4 comments:

  1. This is an interesting article considering we are reading about the government being The Ultimate Risk Manager. From the article it seems that's not the case at all. The Obamacare is failing despite it being meant to help. Sometimes public goods need to be simply public.

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  2. I'm not sure how much more efficient it would be, but it comes down to framing. "Everyone buys insurance" sounds less "socialist" than "the government covers everyone," and there's still a strong opposition in the US for the government to provide anything the private sector could have.

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  3. Its hard to say for sure, but I do agree that a govt run system would face even stiffer opposition than the ObamaCare did

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