Health Insurance
From Libertarian Wiki
Government funded health insurance has a few problems, starting with the phrase health insurance.
Insurance is traditionally a commercial/private system whereby small premiums fund large paybacks for rare or upredictable events.
Health insurance, an employer funded benefit, expanded into HMOs (Health Maintenance Organizations). They did not "insure" health, in the same sense that life insurance does not guarantee life.
The economics were:
- the premiums were cheaper than a pay raise, and
- the employer would help reasonably healthy workers maintain their health, preventing larger problems that could cause the worker to quit.
Along comes government, ever eager to nationalize privately developed concepts.
Unlike Social Security, which maintains the pretense that it is paying back previously collected funds, programs like Medicare are not pre-funded.
I should add Heinlein's admonition, TANSTAAFL. There aint no such thing as a free lunch.
The senior demographic is growing. Medical procedures are increasing in function and price. Prescription drugs are increasing in function and price.
The burden on younger workers will predictably become too great. Either the insurance programs will collapse or the country will collapse.
