It took Congress 2700 pages to amplify the dysfunctions of our current health care system and make it worse. John Cochrane explains the causes of the system's problems and outlines solutions, all in a concise 914 word WSJ column.
A couple of excerpts.
The country can have a vibrant market for individual health insurance. Insurance proper is what pays for unplanned large expenses, not for regular, predictable expenses. Insurance policies should be "guaranteed renewable": The policy should include a right to purchase insurance in the future, no matter if you get sick. And insurance should follow you from job to job, and if you move across state lines.
Why don't we have such markets? Because the government has regulated them out of existence.
...The main argument for a mandate before the Supreme Court was that people of modest means can fail to buy insurance, and then rely on charity care in emergency rooms, shifting the cost to the rest of us. But the expenses of emergency room treatment for indigent uninsured people are not health-care's central cost problem. Costs are rising because people who do have insurance, and their doctors, overuse health services and don't shop on price, and because regulations have salted insurance with ever more coverage for them to overuse.
If we had a deregulated, competitive market in individual catastrophic insurance, that market would be so much cheaper than what's offered today that we would likely not even need the mandate.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303816504577313250871503904.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop
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