IS THE Senate’s revised health-care proposal a good bill? And will it pass? Ideally these two questions would be related. But this is sausage-making, so they are not. Let’s take the first one first.
If you want something approaching universal health-care coverage, there are three ways to do it. One is for the government to tax citizens and then use revenue to fund their care (the single-payer model). The second is to subsidise people to buy coverage. This only works if the subsidies are generous enough for the decision to buy insurance to be a no-brainer. The third is to compel people to buy insurance, by law or by a fine.
At the moment America does all three. Veterans, the elderly, the poor and inhabitants of reservations for native Americans all have versions of the single-payer system, via the Veterans Health Administration, Medicare, Medicaid and the Indian Health Service. The care people receive from these programmes is often poor, but that’s another story. Then, since the passage of the Affordable Care Act,...Continue reading
Source: United States http://ift.tt/2tTBPYL
EmoticonEmoticon