I heard a man on the radio a while ago now who was from the GAO. He summed up the answer to the health care problem succinctly. The government should cover preventative health care and catastrophic health care. People should be left to take care of themselves in between. This could include having no insurance or being covered by traditional health insurance.

The economics of this are obvious. Preventative health care pays for itself by reducing the cost of future care. Catastrophic situations are where you want to spread the risk out among the largest base possible.

Now of course doing this is not free even if it results in a huge savings. The amount of money spent on health care and health insurance now is enormous. Companies and families are paying tons of money into the system. There is plenty of money in the system. The problem is the Medicas and the Blue Crosses fuck it completely up in the middle. They add no value, in most cases they take value away, and they live fat off the proceeds. Everyone is hassled by the insurance companies, doctors and patients and they both get nothing in return.

We could have a government-sponsored health insurance program that let patients go to any doctor for preventative or catastrophic care. The bill is paid with taxpayer money. Well-off individuals could choose whatever additional health insurance they wanted. No one would be forced into the system.

The other great thing with this is that it takes health insurance back out of the workplace. Companies spend a lot of time and money fucking around with it. There is no reason that employers should be in the loop. Again, if companies want to add extra insurance, fine, whatever, but every employee you hire will already be covered with preventative and catastrophic insurance. That is a huge benefit to businesses.

So, yes, we gotta tax someone for it. Businesses are paying money now. Individuals are paying money now. Paying it into a national health insurance system makes more sense than paying it to Blue Cross. I think we can deliver better coverage cheaper and cover everybody.

To be crystal clear to the Righties out there, we shouldn’t socialize medicine. We should socialize health insurance. It is the fiscally conservative thing to do.